Laying down the Digital Law

Remember how a couple of months ago I posted a helpful blog for how the entertainment industry should fix itself? Well it turns out that instead of listening to the helpful advice of an anonymous Internet blogger, the government went the other way.

Today, the digital economy bill passed the house of commons. This is, in my opinion, very much a double-edged sword. Yes, I'm all for legislation to ensure that copyright is kept and rights holders are paid a fair wage. But this isn't it.

This bill is (and let's be clear about this, I haven't read the thing, just several concise summaries) frankly badly-thought out and behind the times. And full of vague language.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not surprised it passed, and I'm not surprised it's opponents are saying it was rushed through before the election. Of course it was, because it's a politically poisoned chalice. No-one knows how properly to fix the situation, and no-one really wants to appear for or against it in an election campaign.

The trouble is, that assuming this thing passes the house of Lords and comes into law (and I expect it will) then it's very open to interpretation.

"Under the terms of the bill, Internet service providers will be obliged to send letters to any of their subscribers linked to alleged infringements." Well firstly, I'm unsure as to the technical definition of "linked", but more than that, it means that you will be notified even if someone else has been using your connection - be it family, friend, flatmate, or person outside who's hacked into your wi-fi.

"Restrictions on the activities of persistent copyright offenders will not come into force for a year and only on the basis of clear evidence of their activities." What, exactly, constitutes clear evidence?

There is some good news - "A clause on "orphan works" - material where the author was impossible to identify - was also dropped after opposition from photographers."- this clause was horrendous, basically meaning that people could claim they'd found pictures etc, and couldn't find the owner, so they'd be allowed to use it for free.

"Another proposal allowing politicians to block pirate websites without primary legislation was replaced with an amendment which lets ministers "make provision about the granting by a court of a blocking injunction"."

OK, I'm a pretty well-educated guy, and to me that sentence is a) full of jargon and b) basically means the same thing, but they do have to speak to a court first.

Look, I don't pretend to be knowledgeable about this stuff, but on reading this, I think I may have to be. Don't get me wrong, I know I break the law by downloading certain things, but I would like to think that I only do it when I don't have much of an option left. I can't watch Lost legally because my landlord won't let me install Sky. If I could, I would do. I can watch Chuck legally, but as far as I know, the UK's about a year behind, and without downloading facilities, I would never have discovered The Middleman, which is so good I imported the DVD set, and want to import the graphic novel.

I just... this feels wrong. It feels like all the rules set out in the bill are so horrendously unspecific that it could be moulded into whatever people want it to be. And I'm guessing that there are more Internet-phobic members of parliament than Internet-friendly ones. So it may end up becoming a horrific piece of legislation.

It may work. And I hope it does. But I am, for now, very sceptical.