Digital Economy Bill [HL]
5:00 pm
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Government Whip (technically a Lord in Waiting, HM Household); Labour)
My Lords, I shall try to address these points. I was trying to give the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, an assurance on universities when I said that we had not got all the information that we needed. We certainly do not think that we can exempt them, but I want to come back when we have fuller information. We will make that information available prior to Report.
There are reasonable steps that institutions such as libraries can take on wireless connection to make it harder for people to access and use peer-to-peer sites and software. We do not pretend that such measures are 100 per cent effective and we do not require this. It is more a case of ensuring that the would-be infringer has to make a conscious decision and some effort to continue to infringe. We have written a letter in which we set out the types of measures that we would deem "reasonable". I do not know whether everybody has seen that letter, but we have made it available.
On wi-fi supplied by local authorities-the Swindon example is the one that comes to mind-we think that it would be much more difficult in those circumstances for significant downloading to take place, because of bandwidth restrictions. If I can supply more information on that, I shall do so in trying to assuage the concerns of my noble friend Lord Maxton.