The Digital Economy Act could be reviewed by the House of Lords next year, if peers are given the right to scrutinise legislation after it has been passed into law.

...

Shortly after Strathclyde's announcement, Labour's Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, the Liberal Democrats' Baroness Hamwee, the Conservatives' Lord Lucas welcomed the proposal and argued that the Digital Economy Act should be the first candidate for review.

...

Lucas said the only reason the Tories had not "sunk" the Digital Economy Bill was that Jeremy Hunt — at the time the shadow culture secretary — thought by backing the copyright crackdown bill "he wouldn't have to discuss [the copyright infringement issue] again for the next five years".

...

The act is already likely to be the subject of a judicial review, requested last week by TalkTalk and BT. These ISPs have said they are uncertain of the act's compliance with European laws on privacy and "the role of ISPs in policing the internet". The act is also a popular choice among those using Nick Clegg's Your Freedom website to nominate laws for repeal based on their conflict with civil liberties.

ZDNet UK

This is the full text from the Luzern round of negotiations, including the name of the negotiating parties along with their positions. It apparently comes from the civil liberties committee (LIBE) of the European Parliament.

Full story: La Quadrature du Net

Inquirer

The ACTA negotiators from the Commission came to the European Parliament today, to inform the Parliament about what happened in the last round of negotiations in Luzern.

However, the meeting where the information was to be given was declared ”in camera”, i.e.: closed to the public.

...

In a democracy, new laws should be made by the elected representatives after an open public debate. They should not be negotiated behind closed doors by unelected officials at the Commission, in an attempt to keep the citizens out of the process until it is too late.

According Article 218(10) of the Lisbon Treaty, the Commission has a duty to keep the European Parliament ”immediately and fully informed at all stages of the procedure”...

Blog of Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström, Sweden

BT and TalkTalk are seeking a judicial review of the controversial Digital Economy Act

BBC

‘New EU rules give regulators a clear responsibility to address the emerging issues around traffic management. The question is how Ofcom uses these and existing powers to further the interests of consumers, while supporting vibrant, innovative content production and network deployment,’  said Ofcom Chief Executive, Ed Richards.

‘The internet is playing an increasingly central role in the lives of citizens, consumers and industry. It provides access to an ever growing range of content, applications and services that we have come to both expect and depend on. How this access is controlled by ISPs affects us all and is of wide reaching significance.

‘At the heart of this discussion is how to ensure that traffic management practices are transparent and how to ensure that traffic management is not used for anti-competitive discrimination.’

Ofcom consultation press release

The European Commission has requested the UK to strengthen the powers of its data protection authority so that it complies with the EU's Data Protection Directive. The Commission request takes the form of a reasoned opinion – the second stage under EU infringement procedures. In the UK, national data rules are curtailed in several ways, leaving the standard of protection lower than required under EU rules. The UK now has two months to inform the Commission of measures taken to ensure full compliance with the EU Data Protection Directive.

Official press release

Officially, the USPTO is proposing an alternative approach that could be a step toward a treaty. Privately, the USPTO and other federal agencies are putting enormous pressure on countries to abandon a binding treaty in favor in a very weak and even harmful resolution.

Jamie Love, Huffington Post

Click for the full size version.

Draft 0.1 by @timdavies for Open Data Impacts research project http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/

The Identity Documents Bill [1] receives its Second Reading in the House of Commons this afternoon. NO2ID [2] welcomes the intent of the Bill, which is to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006 and dismantle the National Identity Scheme, but has identified some serious problems:

• The Bill, as drafted by Home Office officials, broadens further some of the already over-broad offences created by the 2006 Act, and worse, reintroduces some of the deeply flawed official conceptions of ‘identity’ inherent in the ID scheme – such as sentences of up to 2 years for quite legitimately, or accidentally through error or misprint, holding identity documents in more than one name [3].
• The drafting seems a bit casual – some phrases appear to have been cut and pasted from the previous legislation, with little thought as to context [4], and some clauses as drafted would perhaps make anything other than a cursory visual check of a person’s ID into an offence [5].
• The broad data-sharing powers relating to passports in Clause 10 of the Bill would immediately apply to millions of people, not just a few thousand willing ID guinea-pigs. And they would facilitate the reconstruction of an ID scheme in a slightly different form, based on the passports database – as proposed by several ID proponents, most recently David Blunkett.
• The Bill does nothing to address the issue of “ID cards for foreign nationals” — actually Biometric Residence Permits, required under EC regulations to be issued in the form of a card — which were blatantly ‘gold-plated’ and xenophobically spun by the last government in an attempt to boost popularity and demonstrate some progress on the scheme.

NO2ID’s full briefing is available online here: http://www.no2id.net/id-schemes/2010-06-08-identity-documents-bill-briefing.pdf

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID said:

“The government is moving quickly to end the ID scheme. NO2ID applauds this, but we’ll be watching like hawks to see the job’s done properly.

“It’s a shame that such a good start should be so bad in parts. Scrapping the ID scheme was always going to be complicated – not least because the Home Office has been planning its survival strategy for years.”

Notes for Editors

1. Details, including the full text of the Bill and its progress through Parliament can be found here: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/identitydocuments.html
2. NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the
   database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of 'database state' initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.
3. "There are many reasons why people might legitimately hold documents in
   different names (quite apart from errors and misprints): they may have been adopted; a woman may use both her married and maiden names; actors and writers may use stage names, or noms de plume; people with 'difficult' foreign names often use an English equivalent in daily life; a person undergoing gender re-assignment may for a period have documents in both male and female names."
4. "internal evidence suggests hurried drafting: cl.8(1)(g) refers to "every other place", the words of the 2006 Act, where "any other place" would be more applicable"
5. "A literal reading of cl.4(1)(c) and cl.4(2)(b) – making it an offence to have in your possession or control an identity document relating to someone else with the intention of using it to establish personal information about them – perhaps make anything other than a cursory visual check an offence."

Phil Booth and Guy Herbert are both available for interview in central London today. For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact:

• Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, Turn on JavaScript!) on 07974 230 839
• Guy Herbert (General Secretary, Turn on JavaScript!) on 07956 544 308
• Michael Parker (Press Officer, Turn on JavaScript!) on 07773 376 166

Source: NO2ID

Source: UK Information Commissioner's Office Security Breaches Reported to the ICO [PDF]

That’s why I will chair a new Transparency Board, which will include experts, including perhaps the Government’s greatest critic when it comes to transparency, Tom Steinberg. Based at the heart of government in the Cabinet Office, we’ll be listening to what the public want and making sure they get the information they ask for wherever humanly possible. And we’ll be working with other departments to develop the public’s legal right to data. We’ll make the changes happen here in central government, and we’ll be expecting to see them across the rest of the public sector too. The data we release won’t always be perfect. Especially early on, much will be messy, hard to interpret, and some will be inaccurate. This isn’t an exercise in self-flagellation at the taxpayers’ expense or about the improvement and savings that will come when a critical eye is cast over the workings of government.

By Francis Maude MP

Source: The Telegraph

Since the controversial Digital Economy Bill was turned into the controversial Digital Economy Act in the dying days of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's administration, Ofcom has been beavering away at a code of conduct for ISPs that was tasked by the bill to create and enforce. That code of conduct has now been published, and is live on the web (PDF).

...

Notably, it's the content companies that have to pay for all of this. The draft code says that a copyright owner must pay the ISP in advance a sum of money to pay for those notifications, based on the number of notices that it's expecting to file over a financial year. Until that sum is paid, then the ISP doesn't have to send out anything to its subscribers.

Source Wired.co.uk

After more than a year of wrangling both in and out of court, EMI, Sony, Universal, Warner and ISP Eircom finally have a deal ready to fly. Shortly the labels will start supplying the IP addresses of alleged file-sharers to Eircom so that it may punish them. The most stubborn subscribers will be disconnected from the Internet for a year.

...

Those caught up in the sweep will first be telephoned by Eircom with a verbal warning. If that same customer receives a third warning, a 7 day ban will come into force. A fourth warning will see their broadband disconnected for a year. Doyle says research suggests that 80 per cent of people would stop file-sharing after receiving an ISP warning them of the consequences.

Next month Eircom rival UPC will be up in court over its resistance to implement a similar deal with IRMA and many are wishing the ISP well in its battle.

Source TorrentFreak

The BBC licence fee could be used to part-fund the roll-out of superfast broadband across the UK.

Details of the plan were outlined in the coalition deal struck between the Tories and the Lib Dems.

Ed Vaizey, who has been appointed as the new broadband minister, will oversee the roll-out.

...

Digital divide

The new plans were published as the government announced that Mr Vaizey, a joint business and culture minister, would take responsibility for the digital economy.

"We are delighted. Ed knows what he is talking about and it is good to have a minister who knows about and cares about the issues," said Malcolm Corbett, chief executive of Inca (The Independent Networks Co-operative Association).

Mr Vaizey takes over from Labour's digital minister Stephen Timms, who is currently recovering from stab wounds inflicted by one of his constituents.

Some industry insiders were concerned about how well Mr Timms coped with his broadband brief given his other commitments at the Treasury.

Legislation about all things digital falls across a range of departments.

While the scrapped broadband tax formed part of the Finance Bill, the controversial Digital Economy Bill - which has passed into law before the end of Parliament - was drawn up by the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation

But many of the creative industries that add to the digital economy fall under the remit of the Culture department.

Labour appointed an extra minister to deal with the digital divide but this post was closed last year and it is unclear if anyone in the coalition government will have responsibility for this.

Source BBC News

Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that New Labour's controversial identity card scheme is to be abolished by the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government.

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The new Home Secretary stated that ID cards were more of a nuisance than a boon, and did nothing to curb terrorism and organised crime.

ID cards have been issued to thousands of migrants from outside the European Union, and to British nationals residing in the northwest.

Full article at ITProPortal

The UK could see the introduction of electronic voting within the next ten to 15 years, it has been suggested.

Shane Greer, executive editor at Total Politics, said while the technology will 'certainly' not be implemented in time for the next election, it could well be in place within the next decade.

Source: bcs

Due democratic process is lost in the pre-election horse-trading to decide which bills will survive.

Source: Guardian

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has said that the Government must make the Digital Economy Bill more detailed to allow Parliament to scrutinise it properly. It said it could not rule on whether the proposed law was compatible with human rights law until those details were provided.

The Government claims that the controversial Bill complies with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.

The Committee has said that not only will Parliament need more detail before the Committee can decide on that issue, but that the Government must better demonstrate that even the notification system it proposes in relation to alleged infringers is a proportionate response. ...

Source: OUT-LAW.COM

The government's bid to push the digital economy bill through has been dealt another setback after Sion Simon, the creative industries minister appointed to pilot the legislation through parliament for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, announced he is to stand down as an MP.

A spokesman for the DCMS confirmed that Simon will step down at the February recess, which starts next Friday, and that a replacement will be announced in due course by No 10.

Source: The Guardian