Government presses forward with Digital Economy Bill

[DF Bot]

The Department of Business is keen to press on with the government’s Digital Economy Bill, which is where some of the main points from the Digital Britain report could be made into laws.

The main points are:

fighting against illegal file sharing,
allowing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act to change as and when needed,
Ofcom being given new powers, including the implementation of the broadband tax,
the prevention of domain names being registered for illegal activities
and finally, age ratings on games.

There are some serious issues here and many have the potential to cause hassle for the average broadband users who simply go about their normal surfing activities, as it still seems that once accused of illegal downloading there is no real going back, while the broadband tax now promises to help to provide 90% of UK with fast broadband by 2017!

[Miraine]

No trial for the "three strikes" thing, a bit of a step backwards for civil rights etc. no?

The name of it is a bit off, given that there's very little regarding economy in there, just a bunch of things about how to keep people in line.