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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, we turn now to the question of how well the provisions set out in Clauses 4 to 9 will work. I am glad to see that the Government have drafted an extensive section on assessing the impact that the notification letters might make and the list in new Section 124F(4) is a good starting point for setting out the sort of information that the Government, Parliament and the public should know. However, there are a few omissions in that list, the absence of which are possibly a matter for concern. This amendment seeks to balance the focus on unlawful peer-to-peer file-sharing with an assessment of how much use has been made of legal access to copyright material. Often in these debates, the Minister has equated all file-sharing with unlawful dissemination of copyright material. That is an inaccurate view because much of what is downloaded is legal. I hope this amendment will enable a more balanced picture to be produced. I would hope that the measures the Bill provides for copyright owners to address unlawful file-sharing will not remove the incentive for copyright owners to continue to innovate. Internet access is here to stay, and looking to remove every person who has breached copyright from the internet is not practicable.