The highly controversial UK Digital Economy Bill is due to be debated at around 3:40pm today. Readers can follow the debate live by viewing this video on the parliament website - VIEW IT HERE .

UPDATE - 15:41

Mandy is up and talking.

UPDATE - 15:47

He's still talking, plugging the government line about how necessary the laws are. Hope we hear some opposition to the disconnection policy when the lords start speaking.

UPDATE - 15:56

Lord speaking now (couldn't hear his name), mentions need not to forget people in favour of commercial interests.

UPDATE - 16:15

Still not much clear opposition or discussion of the disconnection policy, in the meantime here's a visualisation of the Bill's timetable. It's currently at stage 2 (2nd lords reading).


It seems as if nobody wants to say much about the technical measures until Ofcom has put out its first draft code.

UPDATE - 16:19

Lord Edward Timothy Razzall just mentioned the discredited 6.5million illegal UK downloader’s statistic, which the BBC exposed as misleading several months ago :mixedup: .

UPDATE - 16:26

Lord Edward Timothy Razzall raises concerns about applying retrospective penalties against copyright infringers and the significant costs that could be placed upon ISPs. He also makes a small mention about the importance of making legal content able to format switch (i.e. if you download via a PC then the content should still be useable on other devices).

UPDATE - 16:58

Some interesting remarks by Lord Luce about the somewhat natural and understandable sharing of copyright material between small personal groups. He also warns about the dangers of favouring big businesses too unfairly over consumers and correctly makes the point that the number of illegal UK downloads is NOT equal to the value of lost revenue (i.e somebody who downloads 500 tracks would never have brought that many anyway).

He is currently mentioning the need to create new business models that embrace what consumers actually want; mentions the need for an "ISP friendly" bill that educates and does not criminalise consumers. He also states that early warning letters should be polite and not overly threatening.

UPDATE - 17:20

Can't help but spot Sir Alan Sugar (Lord of Amstrad?) sitting scratching his beard behind the current speaker, Lord Stephen Carter of Barnes. I still don't know why Sugar is even there but apparently it helps if you have a reality TV show and support Labour. As for Carter, he’s currently generalising a lot and talking about the need for universal broadband; much like he did in his Digital Britain report :) .

UPDATE - 17:37

Bns Morris of Yardley welcomes the copyright part of the bill and gives it her support, which is no surprise from a Labour government peer and director of the Performing Rights Society (PRS) *cough*; how very impartial.

UPDATE - 17:54

Bns Buscombe, Chair of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), appears to raise concern about the proposed ability to change future copyright laws without debate. However confusingly she also says that there should be flexibility to adapt the laws.

UPDATE - 18:00

L Roberts of Llandudno comments on the commitment to deliver a minimum UK broadband speed of 2Mbps to everybody in the UK by 2012, which was not really covered by the Bill. He correctly complains that not enough detail about how this will be implemented has been revealed.

It's now 6pm and I am going to make dinner, see you tomorrow ;) .

UPDATE - 3rd December 2009

Here's a full transcript:
http://services.parliament.uk/hansard/Lords/bydate/20091202/mainchamberdebates/part007.html