Digital Economy Bill: Why it’s “not great” and how it will affect us
Posted by Dave on 09 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Hot off the Press
So, unless you’ve been hiding (with 95% of the MP’s) underneath a rock that protects you from any sort of digital media issues and news, then you should’ve heard by now that the Digital Economy Bill has been passed and will inevitably be made law very soon. Everyone is clearly upset about the decision, but what exactly is it that they’re upset about, and how is this going to affect the average internet browser like you and me? Let’s take a look…
Why is everyone so upset?
Well first of all, the major reason that everyone is up in arms is due to the fact that this HIGHLY controversial digital bill was voted into action in a MAJOR hurry and clearly wasn’t given the time and energy that such an important document should be given.
Secondly, apart from rushing the document, only 40 MP’s actually pitched up for the all important third reading of the Digital bill, followed by another 187 (alarmingly close figure to the final number of “Yes” votes) who strolled in at the end of the debate, just in time for the voting stage of the evening. Check out this link for an interesting infograph on the situation (I really hope all the images on that infograph were obtained legally and no copyrighting laws were broken).
What does the Digital bill say?
The biggest concern of the bill is clause 8 which states that any copyright holder can appeal to the Secretary of State for Business (Lord Mandelson) to block:
“a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright”
In layman’s terms, this basically means that anyone hosting, linking to or reading content which is under copyright, can have their internet connection temporarily suspended. So, if you link to a video on YouTube which has been copyrighted (which you most likely won’t know), technically, according to the Digital Economy Bill the government can force your ISP to disconnect you as well as the person responsible for hosting the video (YouTube?).
Now, as we all know, Google links to hundreds and thousands, if not millions of videos, images and music links which are most likely not all 100% copyrighted. Does this mean that Lord Mandelson and his Digital Bill are going to one day order the suspension of Google in the UK? Search Marketing specialists and Google marketing specialists will not be too impressed with this kind of decision!
Many feel that the government is succumbing too quickly and easily to requests from large music and film companies who would obviously be in favour of this Digital Bill. BBC T.V. and radio stations though also stand to benefit financially from this decision which many think has been a massive motivation for MP’s to vote for the Bill as they are all about the money it seems.
File sharing sites will also most likely be the first to be affected by the Digital Bill. Thousands of people share music, images and movies on a daily basis, not for any sort of financial benefit or anything (which would officially make it piracy), but just for the mere fact of sharing files which they have legally obtained with friends and community members. This is essentially the essence of what the internet is about, the sharing of files, knowledge and news.
When this Digital Bill is actually made law, children’s access to numerous sources of information will be restricted to few sites that will have more of a monopoly on the market, which could (in a VERY extreme case) result in all websites forcing people to pay for information instead of being able to easily and freely share it.
Reactions:
Well, 95% of people are completely outraged. Before the digital bill was even passed, 20 000 people had already contacted their MP’s in an effort to stop the bill from being made law. Since the voting for the bill, over 30 000 people have tweeted against the bill. #DeBill has become an official Twitter trend and most of those tweets are completely against the introduction of the Digital Bill.
Jim Killock, Executive Director of The Open Rights Group who has openly been the forerunner against the Digital Bill since murmurs of its introduction started months ago, stated that:
“This is an attack on everyone’s right to communicate, work and gain an education. Politicians have shown themselves to be incompetent and completely out of touch with an entire generation’s values. There are thousands of activists working with ORG planning to show up at hustings, demand answers from candidates, and who are willing to punish those who voted for this at the ballot box.”
TalkTalk who are one of the 3 major ISP’s in the UK, have vowed not to comply with government’s decision to possibly block or suspend users who are seen to be guilty of file sharing. Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s director of strategy and regulation, said the Digital Economy Bill clauses were “draconian”:
“This is made all the more appalling by the ability of big music and film companies to influence government and the absence of any proper debate or scrutiny by MPs – only 5% of MPs turned up for the brief debate yesterday and the other important parliamentary stages will be bypassed in the wash-up process.”
What now?
Mainstream media (The Metro) today, for the FIRST TIME, published an article about the public’s disapproval of the Digital Bill. Why only now? People have been rallying against it for months already and only now they publish a mainstream article? Interesting…or suspicious? Either way, it seems it’s a matter of “too little – too late”.
It seems for now, we will all just have to do our best to get the bill altered in our favour (mission impossible?) and continue to rise up against the Digital Bill in the hope that the internet can continue to serve as the awesome information source that it is proven to be in recent times.
How do you feel about all of this? Do you think it will affect you? Do you agree with the Government’s Bill?
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Tags: digital bill, Google, UK government, UK internet
April 10th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Doesn’t look like my local MP showed up! There is a nifty site you can check it out at: http://www.didmympshowupornot.com/ {update – seems the site has been taken down! well – before it went I managed to see that my local Lib Dem MP Edward Davey was not one of the ones that showed up!}
What I can see is that of the ones that did show up to vote, the bulk of them were Lib Dem or Labour. very few were conservatives opposed the bill. At this point I still support Labour. I will consider Lib Dem but this just adds another feather to my Anti conservative cap! I don’t for one minute believe that the Tories would have seen the trouble building up to this recession any more so than Labour did. Things are certainly hotting up in the coming weeks!
April 13th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I think that the key point that you point out here is the ignorance of the people making these decisions. If social media and online marketing specialists openly admit to regularly being caught off-guard by the incredibly rapid progress and growth in the sector, how can the politians possibly be in a position to vote on such an issue.
The typical brief from a junior assistant will simply not suffice as a means to inform these guys. It is ironic that this comes in the same week as an candidate is fired for his conduct on Twitter.
It is the ignorant who will see the dangers of the unknown and ignore the potential for positives.