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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is important that the subscriber does not have to get into the complicated process of deciding whether or not someone already owns the copyright. I had not realised until I was briefed the other day that copyright is an incredibly tortuous thing when you start to enforce it internationally and you take into account the Berne convention as well as the location of the servers or the people who might be uploading, as we used the word earlier, while the information is being downloaded elsewhere. On top of that, some subscribers will not have the money to appeal and they will just have to pay up, which will open them up to bullying tactics if we do not accept Amendment 119. It is a strange notion if poor—I mean "poor" not in terms of being bullied but in terms of having no money—subscribers should have to pay the cost of appeals when they need their internet connections in order to connect to government services to receive benefits. We have to have a system in which the subscriber does not pay. It is a further complication and why it will be difficult to make the Bill work in the real world.