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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 60 I shall speak also to Amendments 61 and 62. Amendment 63 appears to have fallen into this group from elsewhere and I am not sure whether the noble Lord will choose to reply to it. These amendments serve to open discussion on this subsection, which concerns the notification that is to be sent from an internet provider to its subscribers. This is an enormously important document. The Government are setting out to persuade some 7 million of our citizens to mend their ways with the hope, presumably, that something close to 90 per cent will eventually do so. The document, one that a very large number of people will receive, needs to be carefully crafted. It should be nothing like those sent out by the BBC when you are suspected of not paying your licence fee. That is because, by and large, people know that they are supposed to pay the licence fee. They may have a good reason for not doing so, but they know that they are supposed to pay it. This document will be sent to a lot of people who do not know that the infringement is happening, because someone else in their household is doing it, or, if they do know, they will think that it is the ordinary way of the internet: everyone has been getting away with it, so why not? This is the beginning of a process of education, so the document needs to be full and should not leave a lot of stones unturned. In particular, it should say who the copyright owner is and it should be fulsome in its description of the infringement and the evidence for it. People will need to know what they are suspected of doing, under what circumstances and what the evidence is. The noble Lord was fulsome in his criticism of the activities of certain firms of solicitors who at the moment claim to know about copyright infringement as a result of downloading. Their letters are threatening in tone and extremely short on detail. This letter must be nothing like that; it must be supportive and encouraging and contain all the information, or a reference to it, that the person accused of the infringement needs to know. If the letter comes as a bit of a shock, that person must at least find that all the help that they need is there. I beg to move.