So despite conference taking our peers out for a friendly word in their shell-like, it seems the Digital Economy Bill has successfully cleared the hurdles in the House of Lords.
Some industry experts are relying on the bill passing simply because it runs out of time, the MPs fail to scrutinize it, and it gets through thanks to the wash-up.
So now is the time to write to your MP to insist the bill gets a proper hearing in the Commons. 38 Degrees have information and a campaign to help you do that.
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Extremely important people do this
Just done it. My MP is a Labour backbencher with an 8k majority and a 100% authoritarian rating according to the Lib Dem Voice ranking system. Nobody should hold their breath for his intervention.
Writing to our MPs isn’t very effective if our own front bench isn’t prepared to do anything (or worse, as in the Lords write legislation dictated to them by the BPI) – Nick Clegg needs to show some leadership and put his words at this weekend’s conference into action, as I’ve blogged at : http://tinyurl.com/yzn86tm
Can we just get rid of the stupid bill? It has no real value as it stands.
“We” can’t, no, if you mean the Lib Dem MPs by sheer force of willpower and being right.
I can’t fathom how the Lib. Dems have come to support this Bill. The very idea that one is Guilty till proven Innocent is the very antithesis of liberalism. Particularly worrying since it’s relatively easy to bypass router security and use someone else’s internet. There are so many ways around P2P file sharing like IP2 (anonymity IP’s) that they will be unlikely to track an IP.
Most music down loaders are not going to suddenly buy everything that they are downloading today so the BPI figures for their supposed losses are an extreme-exaggeration. The loss of enjoying Wi-Fi at a local coffee shop, or even sites like YouTube for fear of infringement means the beginning of the death of a fee and open internet: in the US they are planning to throttle the speeds of competitors in favour of those cops. that pay a fixed fee, how long do you think it will be until that makes it’s way over here. For such meagre sums we are left with this kind of authoritarianism. Why bother voting Lib. Dem again?
S Merchant unfortunately we are the smallest of the three main parties so we do not have the power to block any bill as we simply don’t have the numbers. The Tories have indicated they will back this bill as will Labour as its their bill so all we can hope to do is make minor alterations to the bill to try to improve it and to try to stop it going through unscrutinised in ‘wash up’.
If you want to stop such bills even being proposed then the only way to do so is to vote Lib Dem and hopefully increase our power in parliament by increasing the number of Lib Dem MPs/.
Annoying how easily this mess has got this far, just because a few industry executives told the government to pass it. It’s not like there’s even any popular support, like there was for some of the other junk that’s been pushed through parliament.