From the BBC:
Ministers offer concessions on copyright changes
Ministers have given a concession over what critics claimed were “draconian” powers which would enable them to crack down on online copyright infringement.
A clause in the Digital Economy Bill would have allowed ministers to amend existing laws on online piracy without the need for further legislation.
Google and Facebook were among firms to complain about the measure, saying it would hamper digital innovation…
Section 17 of the bill, which has attracted the most anger, would give ministers “reserve powers” to draft fresh laws to tackle net-based copyright infringement without needing parliamentary approval.
Ministers argued that such powers were needed to support copyright laws against future, more technically advanced forms of piracy.
But Conservative and Lib Dem peers had both threatened to vote against the measure when it is considered next in the House of Lords.
In response, the government has tabled several amendments.
These would mean existing copyright laws could only be amended by statute if they was a “significant” new threat of infringement and would provide for more parliamentary scrutiny before this happened.
There’s still an awful lot wrong with the Digital Economy Bill, but cutting back some of the powers it would have given to Government ministers to rerwite the law as they wish is a welcome change.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
"The old savage England": D.H. Lawrence visits the Stiperstones
Church Green video
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
Endometriosis and acetylation
Henry
Daniel Walker
David Raw
3 Comments
This is not a climb down. This is typical of NuLabour strategy over the last 8 years. Present something so extreme that people focus on that, Remove it and everyone feels happy clappy.#
Remember this is a Government that once legislated to abolish Parliament.
All of the remaining pernicious protections of a dead media over Internet Service providers remain. The fact is that this Government does not understand how people view the internet.
Download the game, movie, song. Don’t like it. Scrap it. Like it buy it. Like the band – go see them.
This is a piece of legislation designed to protect the likes of Simon Cowell and not the people who buy 50meg+ broadband.
It is a disgusting authoritarian bill, that has absolutely no redeeming features. It needs to be talked out.
In other news, the government’s “impact assessment” on the bill was just released, and the section on file sharing is a complete farce. It presents a result of costing £500m (paid for by a stealth tax on internet connections) and generating £1.7bn in revenue (to the media companies) – but then acknowledges that they got that revenue figure from the media companies and some worst-case numbers they just guessed at, were unable to assess its accuracy, and that the accuracy of these estimates is highly dependant on how they are generated, and that other evidence indicates the lower limit on the possible revenue is zero.
I was impressed by both the way in which they admit their own inability to defend these figures, and the sheer intellectual dishonesty of presenting them as the conclusion anyway. It is typical of the way this bill has been prepared and presented.
You mean they tried to do an Enabling Act AGAIN like with the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act?! How much lower can they possibly go?