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Digital Economy Bill [Lords]

I ask the House to resist the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson). Clause 4 deals with the obligation to notify. Several points have been made that will be raised later, but I shall comment on some of them now. It is important for the House to be clear that we are debating the circumstances in which people should be notified that a copyright infringement has occurred. My hon. Friend said that the remedy is inappropriate, but let us be clear that the remedy here is to send people a letter informing them that a copyright infringement has occurred. I hope that, in dealing with peer-to-peer file sharing, as this part of the Bill does, that measure—sending letters to people—on its own will lead to a substantial reduction in the incidence of the unlawful activity about which we are concerned. Many people have rightly spoken about the seriousness of the concern about the current level of unlawful activity under way.