What next for the Digital Economy Bill?

After the Digital Economy Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons yesterday it seems inevitable that it will gain the Royal Assent before 12th April and become law. 

However, it seems that the fight may not be over.

The internet service provider Talk Talk have responded with a bullish post on their blog stating that they will continue to lobby against the secondary legislation required to implement the bill after the election and that 

"unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders

If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court."

Is this an approach which other ISPs will take or will they roll over when confronted with a "copyright infringement report" from a rightsholder?

Other legal bloggers, such as Clarinette, are taking MPs to task about why they failed to listen to the concerns of their constituents. My own MP, Stephen Hesford, didn't seem to have attended the second reading debate and voted in favour of passing the bill at third reading. There were those such as Tom Watson who broke the whip and voted against the bill (23 labour and 5 Conservative "Digital Economy Bill Saints" voted no according to The Liberal Democrat Voice), but this was never going to be enough to block the bill in the face of overwhelming support from the two main parties.

There is also some "civil disobedience" going on on Twitter in the form of the What Digital Economy Bill? movement. This is a service which allows Twitter users to state that they "do not recognise the Digital Economy Bill" and be added to a list of protestors. At the time of posting 4,751 Twitter users had signed up for the cause.

I personally think that the real backlash will start if the provisions of the bill start to be enforced... either to disconnect individual users or to force ISPs to block sites such as Wikileaks, or Youtube (or maybe even the Telegraph if they publish copyright material along the lines of the MPs expenses documents online in the future).

Could we see an online version of the poll tax riots? I wouldn't rule it out. In the meantime, perhaps we should be asking our ISPs for their comments... and supporting the ones like Talk Talk who refuse to bow down to Lord Mandelson.

The eve of the Digital Economy Bill?

I have posted before about the risks that the Digital Economy Bill poses for internet users and how it seemed likely to be pushed through as part of the wash-up procedure (as described here on boingboing) before the dissolution of parliament.

For whatever it is worth, Merseyside lawyers seem to have united against the bill (at least on the basis of last week's Liverpool Daily Post article quoting various lawyers including me).

Protests against the bill generally have gathered force, but it seems that it may still be a case of too little too late. The second reading of the bill took place today in the House of Commons (what debate there was is reported in Hansard) and the committee and third reading stages are slated for tomorrow, 7th April.

There are clearly objections to the bill from all sides of the house, but this may not be enough to prevent it from being passed tomorow.

There is still just about time to contact your MP (using the 38 Degrees service for example) although the 20,000 emails apparently received so far don't seem to have weighed particularly heavily on MPs.

Will the protests make any difference... or will tomorrow see the bill's final approval in the House of Commons?