---

Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has pointed out, Amendments 35, 47, 48 and 58 seek to clarify that when a copyright infringement report is compiled and sent, that in itself does not constitute evidence of guilt. We agree that such a clarification would be useful, although I believe that new subsection (3) does its best to make it clear that copyright infringement reports describe apparent infringements where there appears to have been an infringement—that is to say, not an actual infringement. I hope the Minister can confirm that this means that a report will clearly only establish that infringement has been alleged and that nothing in these provisions will in any way establish a new and lower threshold of guilt. I turn to our Amendments 36, 37 and 49 in this group, to which the noble Lords, Lord Razzall and Lord Clement-Jones, have added their names and which move in the same direction as their amendments. These seek to tighten up the evidence base required before a rights holder can send a copyright infringement report to an internet service provider. We are concerned that, by making the evidence simply the "appearance" of a breach of copyright, the bar is being set too low. For this process to work, internet service providers and consumers need to have confidence that when an allegation is made it is not on a spurious basis, but that the rights holder is as reasonably confident as he can be that an infringement has taken place. As the drafting stands, allegations could be made and copyright infringement reports compiled and sent simply on the basis of appearance. I do not believe that this is a sufficient level of evidence for this process to go forward, and I hope to hear from the Minister that the current drafting will indeed not lead to lots of speculative allegations.