Government re-states "pragmatic" approach to libraries

In its response to the House of Lords Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee (no, I hadn't heard of it before) assessment of the Cost Sharing Statutory Instrument, the Government has confirmed that it remains aware of the problems of fitting libraries and other wifi providers into the Digital Economy Act 2010. Their response 11 states:

the position of libraries, and other public wifi providers, was considered carefully during the passage of the legislation and during consideration of the initial obligations code. The decision was taken by the then Government that there should not be a specific exemption for libraries since they did not want to incentivise a migration of unlawful file-sharers to such public services. The current Government has supported this line but has continued to be clear that a pragmatic approach to this needs to be found through the practical implementation of the provisions in the code ... and we are confident that Ofcom will do so. In our view it would not be proportionate to impose obligations on libraries etc without evidence that it is necessary.

It's good to have the new Government confirm that it is aware of our discussions with the previous one. However the draft Code published by Ofcom last May didn't do anything to help resolve the issues (if anything, the accompanying paper actually made the situation worse for libraries that do not require users to pre-register), so it will be interesting to see whether the final Code, when it is published, does actually contain a pragmatic and proportionate solution that we can implement. So far all we have is a silent, if satisfying, assumption that we will never reach the threshold of infringements where we would come into the Code's scope but no guidance on what would happen if we did.