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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just uttered in terms of the width of the provisions of this Bill is extremely important in the context of our discussions going forward, particularly on Clause 17, but also more generally with regard to how this impacts on the way service providers operate. I thought that the Minister’s response to Amendment 82 tabled by my noble friend Lady Miller was particularly important. In that context, Amendment 41 is a relative minnow when compared with some of the principles involved in communal wi-fi services, internet cafés and so forth. Quite rightly, those issues have been raised and I believe that further amendments are coming down the track. It may be that this amendment should have been grouped with some of the earlier amendments, but there is a lack of clarity on this, and I was interested to note that the Minister is proposing to write about the liability of those service providers. It is not just the communal internet service providers or internet cafés that are extremely concerned about the wording of the Bill, but also some of the commercial providers. It is also interesting that the Minister started to talk about the kind of steps it is right for those service providers to take in order to prevent their service users infringing copyright and so on. Again, we are back into the realm of proportionality and so on. But some of the wording here is not particularly clear, and this amendment is designed to elucidate the meaning in line 8 on page 6; it actually also applies to line 11. The phrase, ""by means of the service"" suggests that it is the service itself that has allowed the infringement, not the subscriber, while, ""connected to the internet access"" is a much more neutral term that does not put responsibility on the internet service provider. It may be—and indeed I thought that the Minister came close to this—that it is deliberate and that the provision is creating that kind of liability. Perhaps there are duties implicit in the wording of the Bill to which the internet service provider must pay heed. If that is the case, there needs to be a general understanding of that so that internet service providers can take steps right at the very beginning. Completely outwith the initial code of obligation and the technical code and so forth, it needs to be very clear just what the internet service provider’s duties are, and as I say, this goes wider than purely the communal service provider. It is generally applied to the commercial sector as well. I beg to move.