Digital Economy Bill could affect human rights

According to a leading industry group the Digital Economy Bill that has been recently launched by the government could end up affecting the human rights of consumers.

Last year saw the government launch the Digital Economy Bill, which was greeted with some degree of controversy from various industry groups and consumers. One leading industry group has now claimed that this Bill could end up affecting the human rights of consumers. The claims come from a group of Mps and peers that are on the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights.

Officials from the group have said that the Digital Economy Bill could create overbroad powers, and have said that further clarification and details about the Bill are needed to ensure that it will be effective.

Andrew Dismore MP and chair of the Committee, told the BBC: “The internet is constantly creating new challenges for policy-makers but that cannot justify ill-defined or sweeping legislative responses, especially when there is the possibility of restricting freedom of expression or the privacy of individual users.”

He added: “Time must be taken to ensure that the person accused is first identified before any action is taken,” declared the report. The main way in which people are to be seen as guilty of illegal file sharing is to log IP addresses of users that are connected to torrents or file sharing sites (torrents being links to servers which contain files being downloaded illegally),” it said, pointing out that IP addresses could easily be masked or altered.” He also said: “Secondly, the user’s internet connection is to be terminated immediately. This only assumes that the party involved is one person, and not say a family that share a single connection or that a third party has taken control of the network without the owners knowledge, which has been shown time and time again as a possibility, with the use of trojans, viruses and worms.”