The UK Government's Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey MP, has officially invited the Open Rights Group (ORG) and other civil society and consumer groups to join ISPs and Rights Holders in industry discussions over the formation of an alternative website blocking measure ("plan B") for the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

It emerged last week that one of the options being discussed as a replacement to the old and largely unworkable DEA clause (here) was a Voluntary Code of Practice that could end up blocking any website which had been deemed to "facilitate" internet copyright infringement.

An initial list of the 100 worst offenders, including The Pirate Bay, NewzBin2 and several cyber-locker file storage and sharing websites (e.g. Rapidshare?), has already been drawn up.


The Open Rights Group believes that website blocking is a bad idea, especially on a self-regulatory basis "where vital judicial oversight is bypassed". Indeed ISPs, which have been warming to the idea, also requested that an impartial judge be brought in to asses each case and thus provide some legal cover if the website owner decided to sue. Costs remain another issue.