There are other problems with the Digital Economy Bill that haven't made the papers yet.<p>For example, it's going to force mandatory registration and regulation of every entity that licenses intellectual property on behalf of two or more third parties:<p><a href="http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/24455" rel="nofollow">http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/24455</a><p>This is apparently aimed at regulating Collections Agencies like BMI or ASCAP, but it's going to hit everything from literary agents, to publishers with rights sub-licensing arrangements, to film producers, software resellers, Open Source software projects (where two or more programmers participate but do not assign their copyrights to the project organizers), newspaper websites, and quite possibly blogs (if you think the implications through).<p>The mind, she boggles. If you look at it from the right angle, it looks like the foundations of a full-on cross-media censorship infrastructure. I hope I'm being paranoid here, but I fear the worst.
The more I hear about this frightful bill, the more I have to conclude it's Mandelson's effort to poison the wells ahead of the inevitable Labour defeat. He <i>wants</i> it to ruin everyone's day, while being attractive enough to a business-first Tory that it's hard for Cameron to repeal.
Dan Bull did a nice response to this bill, an open letter to Lord Mandelson in a musical style:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_P4lJD_OPI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_P4lJD_OPI</a>