Last night the UK Government rammed through the controversial Digital Economy Bill after its third reading and just two hours debate. This means that it will later become law, everyone will stop sharing files online and the music and movie industries will net billions in the years to come. Better still, it has the full support of the people.

In a late night session yesterday the Digital Economy Bill was forced through by the Government with the assistance of the Conservative opposition.

Complaints that the Bill is far too important to be passed through the “wash-up” period were ignored and after just two hours of debate in the Commons, it will now almost certainly become law.

The anti-piracy measures in this Bill have been essentially written by the music industry but despite opposition from just about everyone, it was approved by 189 MPs with just 47 against.

Former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, who was one of the few who voted against, was clearly upset as he wrote on Twitter: “First time I’ve ever broken the whip in the chamber. I feel physically sick.”

A total of 650 MPs could have been present but only 236 bothered to turn up and many of those that did were still in for criticism.

“It was painfully obvious to anyone watching the broadcast from Parliament this evening that any MP that only turned up for the divisions and not the debate does not care about the views of their constituents, does not care about democracy and does not care about the future of Britain’s digital economy,” said Graeme Lambert, the Pirate Party UK candidate for Bury North.

The Bill will pass without the hugely controversial site-blocking clause 18, but in its place will be a convenient and even more worrying amendment to clause 8. This will allow the Secretary of State for Business to block “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”.

The scope of this amendment simply boggles the mind. Labour MP John Hemming cited the more-often-than-not copyright infringing WikiLeaks as an example.

“A recent example is the US air force video, which it published,” noted Hemming. “Copyright exists with the US Government, who under the Bill could, and would want to, apply to ban WikiLeaks from the UK. That provision is clearly in the Bill.”

Finance secretary Stephen Timms, who insisted that since the creative industries are losing £1 billion a year to online file-sharing all these measures were absolutely necessary, was also in for criticism.

Mark Sims, Pirate Party UK candidate for East Ham noted that Timms spent “much of his time on the floor delaying debate, and refusing to answer questions put to him, instead relying on the party whips to force the vote through, essentially ignoring the concerns raised by voters in their questions put to ministers.”

So there we have it. We’re nearly at the end of the process that will save the music and movie industries, generating hundreds of millions in extra revenue, create countless jobs, stop all file-sharing sites, mechanisms and the general public from sharing files.

That’s it, it’s finished. The war is lost and the best part is the whole thing was pushed through in the highest spirit of democracy and with the full support of the people.

We’re shutting down TorrentFreak now and we’ll be reporting on events outside an HMV near you soon instead. We just hope they have enough stock to keep up with demand. Exciting times ahead.

Yeah, I don't think that this has gone down well for consumers in any media area - although it's great if you happen to be one of the fat cat corporations who suggested the clauses. I follow games industry news a lot and have already read loads of articles complaining about the sloppy work on this bill. If they do actually apply it thoroughly it will be disastrous for regular people and their access to the internet. One comment on an article I read was something like waking up in the UK and finding it was suddenly China...

I'd suggest that the ISPs being forced to block access to major file-trading sites will be the first step. I'd also be surprised if ISP-owned binary newsgroup services are still offered a year or two from now (which would be awful for my own downloading ). Targeting individuals is generally seen by police here to be a waste of time, money and effort unless they can pin them to a massive copyright fraud case, such as selling loads of dodgy DVDs, etc., so we'll see how they try to target individual downloaders in the coming months. I'd expect a bunch of scaremongering ad campaigns by the government, plus loads more letters demanding cease and desists from specific companies to start hitting people well before the year is out.

They should start by checking the people who voted yes to this bill. If they have just one torrent or any other file related to file sharing on their pc they should get a warning. If they have 3 then it should be a block and a large fine .

It is stupid how some companies complain about file sharing. Take Sony. They sell dvd's and cd's so they complain about losing money because of people downloading those dvd's and cd's. Then they sell electronics like mp3 players, stereo's you can hook up to the internet to download directly (sure this can also be done legally I admit), divx players (this is not likely to be legal), HDD recorders with usb etc.

We started breaking the actual copyright law since we could record a movie via a vcr. Sure the broadcasting agencies paid to broadcast it, but didn't we borrow videotapes from neighbours because we forgot to record that program or taped another one. This is actually also breaking copyright law. Same as showing a rented movie to a large audience if you read those dumb descriptions on dvd's or videocasettes.

But honestly, not many things will change. Some people will be scared at the beginning and realise later that this is just impossible to maintain because there are privacy laws, internet security issues and mostly high costs. So like in the past they will just focus on websites that make file sharing possible and try to close those down.

They do same thing once every now and then. Make some new laws that are supposed to be "the downfall of filesharing" and it ALWAYS ends in the same way. Nothing happens. The easiest scared stop filesharing and thats mainly their goal. There is no way they or anybody will ever be able to decrease filesharing, its already a part of normal life and eventually they will have to give up persecuting peopl. Shame so many are so easily scared and actually buy the whole package. Havnt people learned yet that the facists traditionally always uses fearmongering as their number one weapon against the freedom of the people. The reason these things are blown out of proportion and scare so many is because the same people that are against it are also in charge of the media that are supposed to tell us what is happening in the world.

If these idiots had the minimal idea about reality they would quickly realize that there are no resources to have police checking each persons downloads, running around arresting people for downloading mp3's and avi's and making reports, arresting people and taking them to court. There are a lot worse criminals out there and filesharers are hardly priority number one lol.

They can close a website but it takes about 5 minutes to restore it on another server so in the long run its pointless too.


I wouldnt be too worried.

banning the internet is like... actually it can't be compared to anything...

its just so huge and complex...

in the end... the music/movie industry DOES make a lot of money...