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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, have pointed out the problems of using the Swedish example as justification for the way the Government are going on this. I meant to make this point at a much earlier stage. The Swedish data show that although there was a drastic fall, immediately after the case, traffic went up. There is the problem that some of it is clearly encrypted and designed to avoid the kind of protection and sanctions that follow. My main point on this amendment is that the whole point of the Government’s strategy—as I understood it, and certainly as I would like to see it—is to move to a situation where the majority of people gain their copyright material by legal means. In other words, we should have time and incentives to develop the legal forms of downloading, particularly of music. If we do not know what level of take-up of those legal services exists at the beginning, we cannot judge how far we will need to use the sanctions that are provided in the next few clauses. It is important to get this benchmark, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, refers to it. It is also important to get the strategy right. It is not sensible to use sanctions simply to reduce the traffic. The aim must be that the majority of the market uses legal means of downloading, uploading and file-sharing. Then we can deal with the residual problems that exist in the illegal sphere. I was going to make this point later and I will probably make it again, my noble friend will be happy to learn. It is very important that something like this amendment gives us a starting point in assessing how far we are successful in that objective.