Posted: 05th Jul, 2010 By: MarkJ

The coalition government's Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg (LibDem), has launched a new
Your Freedom website where members of the public can put forward their own ideas for changing UK law.
It's no surprise to find that one of the
TOP 5 most active subjects on the website calls for an unconditional repeal of the controversial
Digital Economy Act (DEA). This threatens to impose unworkable and potentially unfair restrictions upon broadband ISP's and their customers.
The news follows on from last week's proposed
Early Day Motion (EDM) to repeal significant parts of the DEA (
here), specifically areas related to imposing internet access restrictions on broadband ISP customers; those "
suspected" of involvement with unlawful copyright p2p file sharing activity.
Deputy UK Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, said:
"We're working to create a more open and less intrusive society. We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.
This site gives you the chance to suggest how we can do this. Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.
So if there are any laws or regulations you'd like us to do away with, then first, check if there are any similar ideas here already and then add your comments to it and rate it to move it up the list. If it's not here, then add it! And remember - we want you to suggest ideas for removing laws and regulations, rather than ideas for creating them.
We've had an excellent response so far, with over 2,205 ideas, 7,419 comments and 18,000 votes in our first day. It's fantastic that so many of you want to participate - and we apologise if you've had problems viewing pages. We've taken measures to improve the running of the site, and hope that it will run more smoothly now."
At the time of writing a proposal to cull the DEA was listed as the 5th most popular topic under "
Repealing unnecessary laws", with 1064 votes and 191 comments. However it quickly becomes the TOP topic when weighted by votes alone.
Your Freedom - Repeal the Digital Economy Act
http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/repealing-unnecessary-laws/digital-economy-act