The Digital Economy Bill will provide an immediate test for the UK's new coalition government. Will the LibDems keep their pledge to repeal it?

Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat economic spokesman, has been made Secretary of State for Business under the new conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK.

The Liberal Democrtat policy before the election was to oppose the Digital Economy Act and in particular, the policy of 3-strikes/graduated response measures for copyright enforcement. This was clear in  their emergency motion at their recent Spring conference.

Liberal Democrat leader, and now the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, is on the record as calling for the repeal of the Digital Economy Act.

Meanwhile, Ofcom has acted in indecent haste to ram through the implementation of the mis-named Act, in spite of widespread opposition which contentds that the Digital Economy Act  will  predjudice civil lilberties, be an expensive drain on industry finances and bring little in the way of benefit.  

Two meetings with industry have already

Britain could get a "quasi-judicial" system of automated justice under new proposals being rushed into place by the telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. The implementation of the Digital Economy Act is happening in meetings taking place behind closed doors with no transparency.

The aim is to get the first stage of a draconian copyright regime in place by the end of the summer. The proposals which have filtered out of the meetings appear to be non-compliant with the EU Telecoms Package final agreement.

After the Digital Economy Act was rammed through the Parliament under a guillotine which surely must make its legitimacy questionable, Ofcom is doing a cloak-and-dagger exercise to make the Act a reality before the public can realise what it has done.

From what can be ascertained, Ofcom intends to get a system in place for the warnings-element of a 3-strikes system in place by August. This is two-three months shorter than even the time-frame in the Act. In order to achieve this timeframe, Ofcom is calling meetings with the two industries concerned - entertainment /music; and Internet/telecoms; - in spite of the election and the political uncertainty in the UK at the moment.

The first meeting was on 28 April - not even a month after the Act achieved Royal Assent and officially became law - and the second meeting was on 6 May - the same day as the UK election.

The meeting agendas are to discuss

Civil liberties...the UK election ...and the Digital Economy Act. Can the Liberal Democrats use the Digital Economy Act as one of  their bargaining chips in their deal with the Conservatives to form the new UK government?

Following the UK election on Thursday, which gave none of the political parties a clear majority, negotiations are  now taking place between the Conservatives - who gained the largest number of seats - and the Liberal Democrats - who hold the balance of seats between the Conservatives and Labour.

David Cameron has stated that one policy issue where the Conservatives and LibDems have common ground is civil liberties. He cites their mutual opposition to Labour's  ID card scheme. 

However, as iptegrity readers will know there is another major civil liberties issue raging in the background, which the LibDems have understood and  the Conservatives have not.

These issues concern the Digital Economy Act and the reversal of  a principle of justice which has existed in England since the Magna Carta, namely the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. Mr Clegg's advisors will be able to obtain full details of this issue from their Liberal colleagues in the European Parliament who fought for it in the Telecoms Package in November last year.  In particular, their

The Conservatives could have blocked the Digital Economy Bill (which is now a  law). But they chose not to, according to David Cameron, because the music and entertainment industries were "more important".  LibDem leader Nick Clegg called the DEBill a ‘stitch-up'. Labour leader and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, does not even know what it is. What does this say for democracy, as UK citizens go to vote this Thursday?

David Cameron, the leader of the UK Conservative party, was filmed for a three-way leadership election debate sponsored by Facebook and YouTube. Mr Cameron says that he could have stopped the Digital Economy Bill, on the grounds that there was no time to debate it. But he did not do so, because "there were important things in the Bill for a really important industry, that is music, 

88 individuals from the music and entertainment industries appear in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List. An elite half dozen or so are richer than the Queen. Is this who the Digital Economy bill is designed to protect?

The Digital Economy Bill is openly intended to protect the interests of those who benefit from rights vested in entertainment and music. It seeks to erect an infrastructure of censorship for their benefit, which will be ultimately paid for by consumers in increased broadband charges. It is therefore interesting to see how many individual rights-holders are in this year's Sunday Times Rich List and who they are. They include many well known singers and actors,  such as Elton John, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry, Kylie Minogue, as well as Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame). Their fortunes are more than most people could ever imagine earning,  seven are richer than the Queen,  and quite a few who are not much poorer than she is.    The  full list is pasted below.

From a policy perspective, in a deep recession which we are not yet clear of,  when many  people are being made redundant and young people have no chance of a first job, we have to