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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, when a subscriber is faced with an accusation which is technical in nature, he will often need some help to understand what it amounts to and how he can prove his innocence, or otherwise. Here, I envisage Ofcom offering a service whereby a subscriber can download a small program to his computer which will then inspect it and say, "Yes, you have taken the measures necessary and yes, there is no trace of unlicensed copyright material on this machine", sign it off and thereby provide sufficient proof that he is innocent. That is an easier thing for Ofcom to do. Ofcom is a body which may be trusted to do that. That sort of intrusiveness on one’s computer hard disk is not something for which one wants to have to go to a commercial source, because it is all too easy for someone to add bits to that program that you do not want there. One way or another, the process has to provide subscribers with the ability to prove or disprove the allegation and to understand it. They will need some technical help to do that. It need not be expensive—or cost very much at all—but it needs to be there. I beg to move.