Opposition to Digital Economy Bill grows in UK

We’ve covered the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) here before, when we saw photographers protesting its possible effects on orphan works.

Now opposition is growing, and growing fast. And for other reasons.

The current British Labour government, and particularly its Secretary of State Lord Mandelson, is trying to push the DEB through Parliament as quickly as possible. Some campaigners have said that the pace of the Bill’s progress is almost undemocratic, such has been the lack of proper debate on the floors of the Houses of Commons and Lords.

What the DEB proposes is to put massive control in the hands of the music and film industry. They would have the right to demand download records from Internet Service Providers, and the law would give the Secretary of State the power to disconnect entire households from the internet. There wouldn’t even need to be a criminal trial; as far as the Bill is worded, just the say-so of the industry would be enough.

What’s worse is Clause 17 of the Bill, which allows future Secretaries of State to go back and amend the entire bill without further Parliamentary debate.

The music industry learned its lesson when it was Napstered back in the late 1990s. Now it is fighting back not with common sense and understanding of how the internet works, but with the only other thing it has left: money. It’s spending money on lobbyists and PR firms, who in turn are persuading mostly clueless politicians that their view is best.

You don’t just have to take the word of comedian Mark Thomas, presenter of the video embedded above.

David Campbell, professor of cultural and political geography at the University of Durham in England, writes on his blog:

“The DEB is waging an unwinnable war on behalf of the established producers. Central to the government’s position is that downloading and file sharing threatens the established creative industries. But does it? In Lessig’s book Remix he cites some studies that demonstrate there is no statistically significant connection between downloading and a drop in commercial sales of films or music. One of these says that Internet piracy accounts for less than a quarter of the drop in music CD sales – meaning that three quarters of the decline comes from commercial reasons for which the established companies are responsible. The DEB defends the collapsing business models of the big players in the film and music industries while endangering the virtues of the web for new forms of creativity.”

Later, he concludes:

“The only explanation for the government’s contradictory approach to copyright in the DEB is the power of corporate interests who want to punish file sharers. Even if the DEB passes, it won’t succeed in ending illegal downloads. That doesn’t make such activity right, but, to go back to Lessig’s arguments, why seek to fight an unwinnable war that will result in numerous innocent casualties?”

Campaign group 38 Degrees is trying to drum up support. Photocine News readers in the UK are urged to add theirs, before the DEB’s rush through Parliament is complete and it becomes law before the looming General Election – after which a new Government will have far more important things to think about.