Yesterday, the British Parliament passed the Digital Economy Bill by 189 votes to 47. It has managed to keep the majority of its original clauses intact. The most controversial one aims at cracking down on digital media piracy by authorizing the suspension of repeat offenders’ Internet connections.

The law makes Britain the second large European country, after France, to approve a so-called ‘three-strikes’ policy, a graduated response system, under which online copyright violators face temporary suspensions of their Internet accounts if they ignore warning letters to stop.

While the bill has been welcomed by rights holders across the creative industries, the Open Rights Group, which campaigned unsuccessfully against cutoffs of Internet service for illicit downloads, vowed to turn the passage of the bill into an election issue. Britain goes to the poll on 6 May.

The UK government removed a proposed clause that would allow politicians to block pirate websites without primary legislation, but replaced it with a different amendment which will allow the Secretary of State for Business to block any site 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".

One of the UK's three biggest Internet service providers has declared it will not co-operate with measures to combat file-sharing set out in the bill. TalkTalk, which has more than 4 million UK internet users, said that objectionable provisions remain in the bill, including those that would allow content companies to force ISPs to block the connections of customers suspected of online copyright infringement.

Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk's director of strategy and regulation, said the proposals were "draconian": "This is made all the more appalling by the ability of big music and film companies to influence government and the absence of any proper debate or scrutiny by MPs – only 5 per cent of MPs turned up for the brief debate and the other important parliamentary stages will be bypassed in the wash-up process."

Photographers and their representative organisations have labelled the removal of the controversial Clause 43 from the original draft as a "splendid victory." The Clause would have given the Secretary of State the power to grant authorisation to a third-party organisation to license specific orphan works. An orphan work is a creative work whose author cannot be identified or found.

The original Bill would have allowed organisations such as the British Library to use and exhibit millions of orphan art works it possesses in its archives. However, photographers argued, it would also have given a blank cheque to commercial entities to use orphan works for a minimal fee and without the author's consent.

Members of Parliament were criticised earlier in the week for being very few in number while the Bill was being debated during its second reading. The opposition to the Bill has been strong, with over 20,000 voters writing to their MPs in the last seven days to lobby against the Bill being rushed through in its current format.

Several of the key creative trade unions, (such as The Writers’ Guild and Equity), which have come together under the collective banner title – the Creative Coalition Campaign, issued a supportive statement regarding the Bill’s passage: “For too long, this illegal activity [web piracy] has been threatening the livelihoods of thousands of workers throughout our sector.”

Story filed 09.04.10