Cracks starting to show on Digital Economy Bill

Peter Mandelson salutes his paymasters, the record industry

As Leftfield has already reported, Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems have been united on at least one thing in the run up to the election: their desire to allow the corporate culture industry write the law when it comes to filesharing on the internet.

The epic law fail that is the Digital Economy Bill basically gives the British Phonographic Industry, UK Music and other corporate lobbyists everything they want: severe punishments for people who are caught sharing files on a not for profit basis online, up to disconnecting whole houses from the internet. Coincidentally, the Director of Public Affairs for the BPI is a Labour candidate in the election.

The bill is one of the more blatant examples of how corporations have a complete stranglehold over all the major political parties. Unfortunately for both the parties and their paymasters however, they had reckoned without the power of pissed off internet users.

BPI's director of public affairs, Labour candidate, and knobhead Richard Mollet

A wave of protest has crashed on to Westminster in recent weeks against the draconian bill. Last week over a thousand people protested outside Parliament, on top of the huge numbers of people getting in touch with their MPs. And members of the major parties themselves have been up in arms about the proposals. Lib Dems, to their credit, have had a grassroots rebellion against their own party leadership on the issue, after Lib Dem Lords (going against their own party’s policies) actually introduced amendments that made the bill WORSE.

As a result of the internal pressure, Lib Dem MPs have been forced to say they will withdraw all support for the bill being sent into the “wash-up”. The wash-up is the name given to the last few days of parliamentary business before an election, in which all the major parties co-operate to push through things they all agree on, away from the scrutiny of the media and the public. If the bill gets into this stage it will become law in the next couple of weeks without any kind of the usual debate and scrutiny given to new laws.

This week, an appeal was launched to raise funds for an anti-bill advertising campaign. The initial target was to raise £10,000, but this was beaten in a few hours and so it was upped to £20,000.

The pressure is being felt by Labour MPs as well, as one of them, Austin Mitchell, has changed his mind about his previous support. He’s tabled an early day motion which says:

“That this House believes that the Digital Economy Bill [Lords] is too important to be taken further in the last days of a dying Parliament; and considers that a bill with so many repercussions for consumers, civil liberties, freedom of information and access to the internet should be debated and properly scrutinised at length and in detail, with a full opportunity for public discussion and representation in a new Parliament after the general election and not rushed through in the few days that remain in this Parliament.”

Write to your MP now and demand that they support Early Day Motion 1223! The 24,000+ words in the digital economy bill deserve more than a couple of days putting it through on the nod. We people of the internet may well be on the verge of a massive victory against the corporate culture industry!