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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord’s amendments. It is quite right that libraries and educational establishments might have particular conflicts between their founding principles of allowing users access to as broad a selection of material as possible and the Government’s desire that none of those users should ever abuse the service. It is only common sense to require the Secretary of State to have regard to these difficulties when imposing a technical measure. Indeed, having regard to the feasibility of an order should be a concern across the board. Educational establishments might have difficulties with their principles, but other organisations might have difficulties on purely practical grounds. If a local shop is providing free wireless access, something that is of great benefit to the public, there is a limit to how effective any preventive measures they take will be, and there are some very technically expert people out there. It would be quite unreasonable to expect every service provider to counter every attempt to infringe copyright through their service.