{"id":92970,"date":"2010-03-22T16:53:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T16:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=2351"},"modified":"2017-07-21T17:21:25","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T16:21:25","slug":"digital-economy-bill-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=92970","title":{"rendered":"Digital Economy Bill: web censorship on horizon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Razzal introduced a controversial clause in the already controversial Digital Economy Bill earlier this month, which Google, Facebook, BT, among many others, have claimed<\/a> will “threaten freedom of speech and open internet” in the UK.<\/p>\n

Clause 18 (amendment 120A)<\/a>, ostensibly to introduce judicial oversight to the legislation, allows copyright holders to demand ISPs block web sites which may contain copyrighted material. Sites like Youtube and Wikileaks come to mind.<\/p>\n

Jim Killock, of the Open Rights Group<\/a> (ORG), notes this will curb freedom of expression in the same way British libel law currently does: “Individuals and small businesses would be open to massive ‘copyright attacks’<\/a> that could shut them <> down, just by the threat of action.”<\/p>\n

The BPI<\/a>, which lobbies for multinational music corporations in the UK, however, claimed the clause was a “clear and sensible<\/a>” mechanism in a letter to the Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No wonder: the ORG revealed last week<\/a> that clause 18 was copied almost word for word from the BPI’s draft!<\/p>\n

Fears are now, because of the coming general election, the bill will be passed<\/a> through the “wash up” procedure, where the government and opposition make deals behind closed doors, bypassing parliamentary debate.<\/p>\n

BPI lobbyist, and prospective MP, Richard Mollet, said in a leaked memo<\/a> that if the parliament does its job and forces a debate the bill may not have time to be passed before the general election. Despite this, Richard notes MPs will likely have “minimum input” from this point on.<\/p>\n

The ORG and 38 Degrees are urging citizens<\/a> to lobby their MPs on this, and the “three strikes” disconnection policy which threatens<\/a> to deny citizens the use of what is increasingly a vital service for work, education and social life: the internet. Over 10,000 have already taken up the call .<\/p>\n

In a letter to the Guardian<\/a> on 19 March, Jo Glanville of Index on Censorship and others demanded that the bill be scrapped or properly debated in parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aaron Newell<\/strong>: reaction to Britain’s Digital Economy Bill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883,1],"tags":[1523],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94600,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92970\/revisions\/94600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}