The Digital Economy Act (UK) – Preview for Down Under?

Abstract

The Digital Economy Act 2010 (the Act) was given Royal Assent on April 8th, 2010. The Act regulates digital media and contains many of the suggestions from the Digital Britain Report of June 2009. The Act is controversial for many reasons. First, the lack of debate surrounding the Bill left many commentators reeling. The first reading of the bill was presented to the House of Commons on March 16th 2010, was not debated at length in the Commons and pushed through in the dissolution of Parliament. Second, whilst the Act touches on many areas of a digital economy such as the regulation of Channel Four, the most contentious parts of the bill are those centred on shutting down online piracy. The spirit of these provisions is to use Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to police individual users and their use of peer-to-peer file sharing websites.

Keywords: Copyright