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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is extremely important. What is very often termed the mere conduit protection for ISPs and for people with things such as proxy servers is core to allowing internet traffic to proceed unhindered across the internet. We interfere with that at our peril. We should also think ahead to some of the powers which we are giving the Secretary of State later on in the Bill to alter various Acts and to introduce different technical measures, some of which may require the ISP to interfere with the traffic in a way that would be a breach of some of these other Acts. I am not sure that this has been thought through terribly carefully. We could end up inadvertently painting ourselves into a corner, and the UK could become a difficult place in which to do business.