Internet cut-offs, website censorship about to drop on UK
“Wash-up” might sound homely, conjuring visions of a family scrubbing up after a cheerful dinner as the evening descends. But it’s also the name of a UK legislative process in which bills can become law through a quick process that bypasses normal debate. Wash-up happens at the end of a parliamentary term, just before new elections, and it is designed to finish non-controversial outstanding business.
But is it appropriate to use wash-up to make major changes to UK Internet access, giving copyright holders tremendous new power to go after P2P pirates and even block entire websites?
The UK’s current Labour government thinks so. It is intent on jamming the “Digital Economy” bill through Parliament in the next couple of days by means of the wash-up process after calling a general election for May 6. Chris Marsden, a senior lecturer in the University of Essex’s law school, calls the process “an absolute insult to Parliament, to Internet users, and to democracy.” He goes on to “add for overseas readers that this Bill is not just anti-digital economy, but very obviously anti-net neutrality as well as against basic rights.”
But according to the government, the problems addressed by the bill are so severe that it’s simply not possible to wait a few weeks until a new government is in place. The UK’s “creative industries” are bleeding, hemorrhaging red ink and jobs, so action must be taken. The bill’s “second reading” in the House of Commons took place last night; it is set to pass the committee stage and a third reading at some point today. In a day or two it could become law.
Graduated response and censorship, UK style
What’s in it? All sorts of stuff (read the current draft). ISPs will immediately have to send warning letters to accused P2P users, for one thing. After a year of letters, new “technical” measures can come into force that include speed throttling, measures that will prevent subscribers from “using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use,” and Internet disconnections. (Backers of the bill note that these are only “suspensions,” not permanent “disconnections”; the difference between the two seems largely semantic, as a subscriber account is in fact cut off from the Internet, regardless of whether the subscriber himself committed any infringement.)
As for blocking complete websites, the government is on board with that, too. The bill grants the UK’s High Court the power to order Web blocks against any site, for a number of vague reasons including “any issues of national security raised by the Secretary of State.” Generally, the blocks are meant to target sites where a “substantial proportion of the content accessible at or via each specified online location infringes copyright.”
The bill does incorporate protections for these penalties, including an appeals process for Internet subscribers, but taken in total, these are dramatic changes to the current Internet regulatory scheme.
How much debate was taken on these matters in Commons? We found out last night, when less than 40 of the 646 MPs showed up for a few hours of debate on the bill, which then passed its second reading. One of the reasons for the low turnout: debate didn’t even get underway until 4:27pm.
A “weak, dithering, and incompetent” bill
Those who did show up had plenty to say (read the lengthy transcript). Even the bill’s main backer, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Ben Bradshaw, opened his remarks by saying, “It is not ideal that the Bill is not likely to enjoy full debate through its Committee stages in the House, but at the end of a Parliament there are always Bills to which that applies.”
Bradshaw was soon interrupted by Tom Watson, a Labour MP, who references a recent petition campaign to hold the bill back for more debate. 20,000 people wrote their MPs on the issue, but Bradshaw isn’t swayed. “We are all aware of the e-mails with which we have been inundated in recent days. I am sure my honourable Friend is also aware of the competing newspapers adverts today from the unions and trade organisations representing those who work in the creative sector who, with respect, probably number hundreds of thousands and feel it is important that the work that they create is not devalued by an issue that we will shortly discuss in more detail. They feel just as strongly that they need the legislation now as the people he mentioned think we should not pass it.”
Kate Hoey, a Labour MP from Vauxhall, was even more direct, saying that pushing this bill through will hurt people’s involvement in democracy. “Will the Secretary of State look back in history and see what happens to legislation that gets pushed through the House quickly, without consultation? It looks as though we could push some measure through—perhaps there will be a little stitch-up between the three Front-Bench teams—but out there, ordinary people, many of whom have only begun to realise the repercussions of the Bill, will feel totally let down by Parliament, just before a general election.”
Jeremy Hunt, a Conservative MP from South-West Surrey, then blasted the entire bill. “This afternoon, on the very day when time has finally been called on a weak, dithering and incompetent Government, we are faced with a weak, dithering and incompetent attempt to breathe life into Britain’s digital economy… Instead of a big, ambitious vision for this country, we have a digital disappointment of colossal proportions.”
A “contradictory absurdity”
But concern about the creative industries propelled the bill through its second reading anyway. It should move quickly through the rest of the wash-up process in the next couple of days before Parliament is dissolved next week.
The Open Rights Group, a leading digital rights group in the UK, has made its opposition clear, replacing its normal home page with this:
We asked our own resident Londoner, Peter Bright, to pull an opinion from his vast store of them and share it with us. Is the opposition to the Digital Economy bill and to the wash-up process overblown?
“The passage of the bill shows a fundamental dereliction of duty by our elected representatives,” he responded. “It places the demands of big media companies ahead of the rights of the citizenry, and the very idea of cutting people off from the Internet in a bill designed to promote the ‘digital economy’ is a contradictory absurdity.
“However, I’m not even sure I can muster the energy to be angry about this; it’s precisely what we’ve come to expect from our illiberal, corporatist, fundamentally corrupt government.”
Unlike the current UK government, Bright is happy to debate his assertions; drop by the comments of this article to discuss the bill, the current state of UK politics, and the best way to address online infringement.
