DEB - New Amendment Demands the Impossible

Even worse news on the Digital Economy Bill, I'm afraid. A successful amendment (amendment 120A) to the Bill last night has given courts the power to order ISPs to block access to any website where a "substantial proportion of the content" infringes copyright.

In his blog, Lord Clement-Jones, who proposed the amendment, quotes the Internet Watch Foundation's list of indecent images of children as a precedent for this. Apparently he has failed to notice the IWF's own FAQ on blocking, which states:

Blocking is designed to protect people from inadvertent access to ... images ... No known technology is capable of effectively denying [those] who are actively seeking such material

and

We consider blocking to be a short-term disruption tactic which can help protect internet users from stumbling across these images.

In the case of copyright infringing material it seems that far more people are "actively seeking" it than are "stumbling across" it. So while the recognition that the courts are the right place to resolve questions of copyright infringement is welcome, the power given them by the amendment is to order ISPs to do something that is known to be impossible.

What's worse is that blocking material that people want to access will encourage them to use methods to get around those blocks (which can be simple and do not require technical knowledge). And once someone starts using those techniques, they are also exposed to all the viruses, trojans and other harmful things on the Internet that we work so hard to protect them from.

UPDATES

The amendment is getting a lot of comment, almost all of it critical:

• Lilian Edwards has an extensive analysis of the legal implications
• Francis Davey suggests that the allocation of costs is likely to produce a chilling effect
• The ISP Association have a critical press release
• The Guardian have a general article and a piece by Cory Doctorow on the legitimate uses of cyber-lockers.
• And an open letter has been written to the Financial Times, as reported by Out-law.