What Does The Digital Economy Bill Mean for You

On Wednesday April 7th 2010 a process that would normally involve several weeks or even months of legislative scrutiny was shoe-horned into a two hour House of Commons debate. A debate largely unattended by the vast majority of MPs. What was the debate about? It was about the proposed new Digital Economy Bill which among other things holds the account holder of an internet connection legally liable for any copyright infringement / piracy carried out using said connection.

Out of a total of 642 MPs, 412 didn’t turn up to the debate. At all. This was despite over 20,000 letters that were sent to MPs by members of the public in the run up to the debate. The bill was rather unsurprisingly voted in with a majority of 189 to 47. I should also point of that the vast majority of those MPs who did turn up to vote, strolled in at the very end and did not actively take part in any form of debate. This was also televised. Today the bill is being considered for a final time in the Lords, where the unelected peers are expected to rubber stamp the legislation.

Apparently this is what’s known as democracy.

The Digital Economy Bill will become law. That much is clear. What does it mean for the average person though. You’d be forgiven for thinking that if you have nothing to hide, and you’re not involved in any illegal activities, then this won’t affect you. But looking closer at the bill there are some alarming similarities with the vague new anti-terror laws which as we’ve seen are being abused time and time again by the authorities.

Disconnection Without Trial

The secretary of state for business can order the blocking of “a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright”

This is intentionally vague. Essentially translating as “We can, via the secretary of state for business, take down any website we don’t like simply by citing a connection to some form of copyright infringement”. The issue of copyright infringement is such a contentious one that it is not difficult to imagine how this might be abused. You could theoretically shut down Google with wording like that.

The bill also requires that ISPs issue warnings to their clients should they be ’suspected’ of downloading copyrighted material. They are also required to suspend and subsequently disconnect repeat offenders. You will have the right of appeal, but you will not be entitled to legal aid. The onus would not be on rights holders to prove your guilt: you would be responsible for proving your innocence.

Wireless Security

It is very clear that no one involved in the formation of this new bill has any idea how easy it is to crack the security key on a wifi network. As i write this on my laptop I have the choice of 7 different networks I could possibly connect to for Internet access. Only one of them belongs to me, 5 of them are secured by weak WEP/WPA keys that I could crack using nothing more than this laptop, some free open source software and a shitload of patience, and one of them is an open BT-FON router (probably a BT HomeHub, which i believe are all now automtically opted in to BT-FON sharing by default?).

What I’m saying is if I wanted to do something nefarious online, like downloading copyrighted material, I could quite easily use one of my neighbours’ home ADSL connections via their ’secure’ wifi router. It would then be them who had their internet connection terminated rather than me. They haven’t thought this through. If someone were to sit outside my house in their car, crack my WEP key and download series 4 of Desperate Housewives using my ADSL connection, it could be terminated. As I work from home I would lose my job and there would be nothing I could do about this. I don’t even like Desperate Housewives.

There is no such thing as a secure wifi network, and even if there were, holding regular people legally accountable for setting up their wifi routers correctly is frankly ridiculous. Most people never learned how to program their VCR, and I don’t think I’d be wrong in counting the vast majority of MPs in that category.

An end to public wifi

As far as I can see, this may well also spell the end of free adhoc public wifi in places such as small independently owned coffee shops. What business in their right mind would want to be legally liable for the actions of it’s customers? I certainly wouldn’t.

In short the Digital Economy Bill benefits no one but the BPI (who shockingly, actually drafted large parts of the bill), and has much less to do with the Digital Economy than it does with restricting our ever increasing powers of free-speech and self-organisation.

The one thing the Digital Ecomony Bill will not do is put an end to piracy. In April last year Sweden’s Internet traffic dropped by around 30% as their own anti-file sharing law came into force. But several months later traffic levels were higher than ever and independent reports showed that the accessing of illegally shared movies, TV shows and music was at an all time high, only now a large chunk of Sweden’s Internet traffic was heavily encrypted, and thus virtually untraceable.

What can you do about all this? Sadly, probably nothing. There is too much at stake here for the government not to step in to quell the rising trend in free speech and free-thinking. It does beg the question though of who to vote for in the upcoming general election. Labour and the Conservatives conspired together to bring these new laws in via the back door, and the Liberal Democrats didn’t even show up to the party.