DMCA Amendment Proposed For UK

Grumbleduke writes "During today's debate in the UK's House of Lords on the much-criticized Digital Economy Bill, the unpopular Clause 17 (which would have allowed the government to alter copyright law much more easily than it currently can) was voted out in favor of a DMCA-style take-down system for websites and ISPs. The new amendment known as 120A sets up a system whereby a copyright owner could force an ISP to block certain websites who allegedly host or link to infringing material or face being taken before the High Court and made to pay the copyright owner's legal fees. This amendment was tabled by the Liberal Democrat party, which had so far been seen as the defenders of the internet and with the Conservative party supporting them. The UK's Pirate Party and Open Rights Group have both strongly criticized this new amendment."

Comments

This is bad ?

[artg]

Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. OK, it's harder for Joe Public to see a popular website, but it keeps the government's sticky fingers off the law, and 'satisfies' the DRM lobby with a technically unfeasible sop. Meanwhile, anyone who cares still has access via proxies, ssh tunnels, blah blah blah