Why we must kill the Digital Economy Bill

Is this bill the end of the internet as we know it?

With crushing inevitability, the House of Lords did nothing to stop the deeply flawed Digital Economy Bill yesterday - and that means a badly written and potentially disastrous new law is nearly on the statute books. We have just two weeks to stop it - and stop it we must.

Between now and the election, the Government will do its very best to push the Digital Economy Bill through Parliament. It's now in a period called the wash-up, where backroom negotiations will tweak the Bill in order to keep various vested interests happy.

More than anything, it's about democracy. Despite the Digital Britain consultation arguing that beheading for Beyoncé downloaders wasn't a brilliant idea, the Digital Economy Bill has become dominated by a vocal minority, the so-called creative industries, with other equally important voices marginalised or ignored completely. The more biased the Bill becomes, the more determined the Government appears to rush it onto the statute books.

As far as the copyright industries are concerned, the whole thing's a done deal: in a leaked email obtained by Boing Boing, BPI Director of Public Affairs Richard Mollet points out that the Bill will probably go through while everybody's attention is elsewhere. "Come the week of Second Reading (29th March) the main political focus is likely to be on the Finance Bill," he writes, "the Budget having been announced on the 24th".

Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than twenty books. Her latest, a love letter to music titled Small Town Joy, is on sale now. She is the singer in spectacularly obscure Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.