---

Digital Economy Bill [Lords]

Clause 4 deals with the obligation to notify subscribers of a copyright infringement. The Minister himself has described it as the so-called sending letters clause. I am deeply upset that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is not present, as he spent considerable time lecturing the House on the fact that it was only about sending letters. To him it was simply about a letter-writing campaign to educate the nation on what its children might or might not be doing in regard to copyright infringement. It is because the Minister himself said that the clause was only about sending letters that I was curious and concerned about subsection (8)(d), which suggests that""copyright infringement reports relating to the subscriber may be taken into account for the purposes of any technical measures."" The amendment states explicitly that those letters will not be taken into account until Ofcom has prepared its report and the technical measures stage is reached. Amendment 38—peculiarly, given that this is the Digital Economy Bill—is an analogue amendment. The Bill allows notifications to be sent either by post or by e-mail, but the amendment seeks to remove the capacity for them to be sent by e-mail. This is simply about the digital age. Many "digital natives" have huge amounts of dormant e-mail accounts. Indeed, if a Member of Parliament were suspected of copyright infringement in the next six weeks and had given his or her parliament.uk e-mail address to the ISP, it is highly likely that he or she would miss the e-mail. Members of the Communication Workers Union may also be grateful for the fact that Royal Mail will have more post to deal with.