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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, with the permission of the House, it may help if I clarify that issue, which I know a little about. It has to do with Europe and the e-commerce directive. ISPs, in acting purely as a way of accessing the internet—as a pipeline to other content—and not delivering content themselves, are mere conduits. As such, they have an exemption. It is rather like the Royal Mail not having to censor all your mail to check that you are not sending bad stuff. If the ISPs tried to check everything that passed through them, it would kill the internet. There has to be a difference between people who host content and an ISP, which is just a conduit to get to content and does not check what is going through it. There has been confusion on that throughout the Bill. I have not worried about it in the past but it may help the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, when he reads this later.