Talk:Digital Economy Act 2010

Conflict of interest: Ben Parfitt
This text was added by Ben Parfitt, referring to his own blog posting on a commercial site:

However, some observers have stated that they believe that the backlash against the Digital Economy Bill is being hijacked by those who simply wish to maintain the ability to download copyrighted material over the internet, undermining the more serious threats to civil liberty that the proposals represent.

The post in question being this one:

At first I just corrected it to remove the weasel worded "some observers", but then I realised this is fairly blatant self-promotion. There's no immediate evidence of his opinion being notable or relevant here, and it doesn't meet the criteria for self-citation, so I've removed it for now.

Asuffield (talk) 13:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Weasel infestation
Sadly, this article reads like many media articles on the subject: vague, poorly sourced claims of lost revenue and criticism. The fact that it cites media articles doing this does not justify their presence in the article. I've tagged a few of them but I'm sure there's more.

None of this seems to be adding anything to the article. Unless somebody can come up with citations (and ideally, rewrite them so they aren't mixed into the description of the bill itself), I'll delete the lot of it and just leave the description of the bill.

Asuffield (talk) 14:33, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * And removed, since nobody else reacted. Asuffield (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

ORG Protest
The Open Rights Group have organised a demonstration in London on the 24th; this should probably be mentioned somewhere.

Due to conflict of interest, I'd rather not put it in there myself; the article's bad enough as it is.

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection

-- M2Ys4U ( talk ) 18:32, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Amendment 120A was written by the BPI
It turns out that the controversial amendment that took out the original clause 17 and inserted a new censorship clause was written almost word-for-word by the British Phonographic Industry --  -- I would think that this deserves a mention. -- M2Ys4U ( talk ) 18:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Copyright Infringement Lists
"In addition, internet service providers would also be forced to monitor their customers' use of their networks, and to send any records of suspicious activity to copyright groups"

This isn't what the bill says. Records of copyright infringement can be sent to the rights owners, not copyright groups, and even then only if requested by the rights owners following the submission of a copyright infringement report, which involves a lot of collecting of evidence, so 'suspicious activity' is not the right phrase. These record are documents of verified infringements of copyright, not simply any suspicious activity.

I'm not gonna try and sort this myself 'cause if the content of this article is anything to go by, I'll be fighting against a tide of government-bashers who've for the most part probably not read the Bill. The whole article really does read like an e-mag editorial. The bias is just undeniable.

The bill IS badly thought out, rushed, and potentially dangerous, but don't cheapen it by making it out to be worse than it is. Jh39 (talk) 16:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This article is in a terrible state. All we get is "The Digital Economy Bill is a bill" before a list of criticisms. Hardly any descriptive text at all. Wikispan (talk) 20:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I've edited that part to remove the sentence about monitoring. This seems to be a common misconception about the proposal. Alex Stacey (talk) 21:52, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hacking without talking
Please excuse me for editing this article without discussing here first. I have just read it and it's obviously in serious need of tidying and removing opinion. Parts of it are also quite inaccurate. I may be going back in. Alex Stacey (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Another attempt at sorting this
Now that the bill is not set to change any more (for the time being), I think someone needs to go through the summary section and check it for accuracy. I've moved a load of stuff which was talking about the history of the bill and the controversial way it went through the wash up to its own section in order to keep the summary section as an actual summary of the thing. The evolution of this bill has been very interesting, but doesn't belong in the summary of this article. I do think it would be good to develop the history section a bit, detailing the amendments to the bill, some of which are listed here:. Alex Stacey (talk) 15:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Rename?
Royal Assent will be granted tomorrow, at which point this will be the Digital Economy Act 2010. Can it be renamed? Richard Gadsden (talk) 17:11, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I just tried being bold - my first rename Richard Gadsden (talk) 17:17, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Well done, Richard. Bold it was. --gilgongo (talk) 21:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * And by the time I arrived, you never would have suspected it had an old name! Stephen B Streater (talk) 21:41, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Final text of the Act
The final text of the Act can be found here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2010/pdf/ukpga_20100024_en.pdf

The version currently linked (via parliament.uk) does not include the amendments made by either Houses of the UK Parliament.

Can someone confirm whether this is copyrighted or not? Don't want to get off to a bad start!
 * It'll be under Crown Copyright -- M2Ys4U ( talk ) 16:46, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Tidy Up and Links
Whilst I applaud the much needed tidy up, I'm not sure dropping the link to http://www.digitaleconomyact.info on the grounds that the wiki article now has a description of the act, the the link is no longer valid as it's neither notable nor reliable. Given it's following similar citation rules to Wikipedia (though not quite as thoroughly) and as far as I'm aware, it's the only attempt at a single source of DEAct info, I think it's quite notable. 94.14.222.55 (talk) 09:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC) (full disclosure. I was one of the people behind setting it up, but I still think my point is valid).

Tom Edward's Reversion of my edit
Tom Edward reverted an edit I made to the article because he disagreed with it:. The text I placed was sourced from an article recently published in a journal. This meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion under WP:Verify and WP:Reliable. My edit should be restored --Politicool (talk) 13:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Weasel wording: Saying that "whether is is a matter of debate" is always dodgy. You'd need a lot more than a single guy's opinion, as you can usually find someone somewhere saying something you like (a technique often used by tabloid papers quoting "experts").
 * Inaccurate: presumption of innocence is maintained during appeals, though in your defence someone had removed that point from the article and I only reintroduced it a few moments before your edit.
 * And the stuff about Brown and Blair just isn't relevant here. Sorry I sounded a little harsh in the edit summary! --Tom Edwards (talk) 13:24, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I accept your concerns - you may want to familiarise yourself with WP:OWN. It is implied in the text quoted that it needs to get to the appeal stage in order to have presumption of innocence through a "fair trial". I think, as the paper suggests there are important distictions to draw between the form the legislation took under Brown and how that differs from what Blair might have done, which would have probably been to introduce offences --Politicool (talk) 13:41, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You're confusing the two stages. The first stage involves a civil court case that operates normally. The second stage replaces court with a non-judicial penalty, which is in the realm of clamping vehicles or having benefits removed in that it is applied immediately and must be appealed against (although in those cases I believe you are presumed guilty at appeals, plus you have to wait for the appeal to finish before the penalty is lifted). These can be said to remove presumption of innocence only in the colloquial sense of the word, as the legal meaning does not apply outside courtrooms. I wouldn't oppose mentioning that as an issue as long as it's put in its wider context, but it's a stretch to pin it specifically to this Act.
 * I agree that the Brown/Blair stuff is perfectly valid, but it is not relevant to the Act. It belongs in an article about UK politics in general. --Tom Edwards (talk) 14:18, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

List of criticisms : Citation needed
Slightly energetic there. I don't think this section makes any factual claims :P. But fine, if you want everything in the world to square brackets next to it. (SOwhoisntme (talk) 19:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC))

Swoosh. There we go: lots of of citations proving that someone did indeed make each criticism. Now to do something more useful with my time. There's a point that misses a citation if someone else wants to chase that. I believe this is mentioned repeatedly by Cory Doctorow (He writes for the guardian - don't you know) in some of his videos but I couldn't find it in text. (SOwhoisntme (talk) 19:52, 19 June 2011 (UTC))

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