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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, my noble friend has proposed a new clause which, in some ways, is a forerunner to the debates which we shall have on Clause 17. He is, of course, quite right: peer-to peer file-sharing is only one of the ways in which copyrighted material is currently infringed. Streaming pirated material is a growing area of copyright infringement. I am sure that there are other ways of stealing material, of some of which your Lordships will be aware and some of which may already be being used but are presently not widely known about. Use of these is likely to continue to grow, especially as the speed of broadband connections grows. There is, of course, a precedent for my noble friend’s suggestion of blocking access to sites proven to be breaking the law. Legislation has, for example, been enacted to block access to sites which show child pornography. However, it appears from conversations with officials that the situations are different in more ways than just the seriousness of the offence. There is, for example, the necessity of complying with the EU directive on e-commerce. I hope that when the Minister responds to my noble friend’s amendment, he will be able to give us a comprehensive breakdown of the difficulties that may arise when legislating to block access to a site proven to be providing illegal material.