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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this amendment suggests that, alongside the sort of technical measures proposed, subscribers should have the option instead of paying an amount to a copyright collecting society. I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, with his fertile imagination, has come up with this proposal. Internet access is becoming increasingly important and it might be that, for some subscribers, the payment of financial compensation to those copyright owners who have suffered would be more acceptable than to have their internet access limited in some way. However, this is not something that we can consider. There are already many ways of accessing content legally and we hope and expect to see new legal content offerings emerge as infringement is reduced. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Whitty said that that was the way forward and in that respect—not in many, but in that—I agree with him. Anyone who is in a position where a technical measure might be invoked must already have had many notifications providing information on how to find legal services. We are not talking about an ingénue or innocent who has stumbled across the content. We are talking about someone who has had repeated attempts to help them. We have sent them one, two or possibly three letters, but they have continued committing the same offence. The amendment says, "That’s okay. You can continue to download illegally, but just pay a fine". This goes against the whole purpose of what we are trying to do. We are all agreed that we are trying to change behaviour and take people away from illegal downloads. I stress that in order to conform to what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, was reminding us about. The amendment suggests a sort of default legal option to download as much as you like for whatever level the fee might be set at. The unintended consequence of this is that it has the potential to be quite an unhelpful intervention in the market for legal content offerings. That is what we have all said that we are trying to encourage. In the interests of time, I am not going to go on any further. I know how much we are enjoying ourselves but, nevertheless, there comes a time when we should consider drawing matters to a close. I hope that, in the light of that helpful explanation, the noble Lord will consider withdrawing the amendment.