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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is an even simpler approach to make the Government appear a little less harsh. As we move on to the first stage notification, the present text in Clause 4 states: ""This section applies if it appears to a copyright owner that …a subscriber to an internet access service has infringed the owner’s copyright by means of the service"." We had lengthy debates in Committee about the fact that the subscriber may well not be the perpetrator of the infringement and how you identify where the real issue lies. A more neutral approach to that in the text of the Bill which says that a subscriber has infringed would be to use my terminology and say that it appears that an, ""infringement of the owner’s copyright has taken place through a subscriber’s IP address"." That is actually a more accurate description of how it would be brought to the attention of the copyright holder and the ISP. It would be a rather softer approach by the Government and might help to turn those first notification letters into a slightly more educational and less threatening tool. I hope that the Government will accept that this is a sensible modification of the approach. It does nothing else to change the Government's intention. I hope that at least consideration will be given to this alternative wording. I beg to move.