Digital Economy Day

06 Apr 2010 | 10.18 Europe/London

Today's the day for the Digital Economy Bill to have its second reading in the House of Commons, with the debate starting around 3.30pm and running to 10pm. With today's announcement of the General Election the Bill is likely to be moved into a negotiation or "wash up" phase in order to clear the slate of work in progress. Campaigners who don't believe in protection of intellectual property are hoping the Bill will fail today leaving the next Government to pick it up, or not as the case may be.

Much bandwidth has been expended complaining about the Bill's provision to use "technical measures" against internet users accused of persistent piracy via file sharing, typically these measures are characterised as "cutting off the internet". There is of course no need to cut anyone off to stop or greatly restrict their P2P activities, Plusnet offer to block P2P for you via their user control panel and many ISPs including Talk Talk already throttle P2P protocols to a low level of throughput. While some users may resort to encryption etc it would be relatively straightforward for an ISP to maintain a restricted bandwidth connection (2M down / 100k up) and to block ports other than web browsing and email, thereby addressing any concerns about freedom of communication while applying a real sanction until such time as the accusation were refuted or the offending behaviour ceased.

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