Posted: 01st Dec, 2009 By: MarkJ

The
Digital Economy Bill is to be debated by the Lords tomorrow in its Second Reading. We recommend that anybody who has an objection to the unfair proposal of disconnecting customers from their UK broadband ISPs, based on a suspicion of involvement with illegal p2p file sharing, write to the lords and tell them about it.
We don't need to go over all the many reasons why disconnections are bad anymore but we've put a few practical examples below. You can email a Lord
HERE; just click the '
Random Lord' button at the bottom.
a. Entire families or businesses could be cut-off because of a single individuals act, such as by a child or employee/ex-employee of a business etc; individuals that would never own up to committing such an act due to fear of more severe punishment.
b. It could make public Wi-Fi services difficult to run because the owner could be deemed responsible and not the anonymous customer.
c. The majority of home Wi-Fi networks, even those with common security and encryption settings, are easy to hack for neighbours/local abusers to download illegally. But the connection owner would still be responsible and how do they prove their innocence? It is effectively a crime without evidence.
d. The proposed appeals process looks like little more than window dressing or a kangaroo court, only a true trial by judge in a court of law should determine whether an individual loses their Internet connection.
e. There are many anonymous methods that allow people to access the Internet and circumvent any such rules (payg Mobile Broadband, VPN, proxy servers, IP hijacking, anonymous P2P etc.), thus the whole principal of what is proposed appears to be unworkable and a massive waste of money.
Disconnection should be removed from the bill as an option. The Digital Britain report did not propose disconnection, only technical measures to restrict some elements of the service (e.g. slow speeds, blocked P2P, blocked p2p link websites etc.). Mandelson added it without proper consultation, thus ignoring the original report’s findings.