Digital Economy Act 2010

The Digital Economy Act 2010 (c. 24) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom regulating digital media. Introduced by Lord Mandelson, it received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010 (with the exception of certain sections that came into force on 8 April; and certain other sections that will be brought into force by statutory instrument).^[1]

Online infringement of copyright

Section 3 to 16

The Act's provisions against the act of copyright infringement proved controversial.^[2] It establishes a system of law which aims to first increase the ease of tracking down and suing persistent infringers, and after a minimum of one year permit the introduction of "technical measures" to reduce the quality of, or potentially terminate, those infringers' Internet connections. It also creates a new ex-judicial process to handle appeals.^[3]
The new process will come into force when Ofcom's regulatory code is approved by Parliament. It begins with rightsholders gathering lists of Internet Protocol addresses which they believe have infringed their copyrights (this data could be gathered by connecting to a Peer-to-Peer download of a work one owns, and noting the other IP addresses to which one's computer connects). They would then send each IP number to the appropriate Internet Service Provider, newly-defined in the Act as a provider of IP addresses^[4], along with a "copyright infringement report".
The ISP must then determine whether the infringement report is valid and send a notification to the subscriber in question if it is. The standard of evidence required at this stage is not specified in the Act, but left to be defined in Ofcom's regulatory code. The report and the subscriber it refers to are recorded by the ISP, but no further action is taken.^[5]
The next stage in proceedings involves the rightsholder requesting a "copyright infringement list" from the ISP. This contains an anonymous list of all subscribers who have "reached the threshold set in the [Ofcom] code" with regard to infringement reports for the rightsholder's works.^[6] The rightsholder can then approach a judge to gain a court order to identify some or all of the subscribers on the list, and with that information launch standard copyright infringement litigation against them.

Ofcom's code

Most operational details of the copyright infringement provisions are not defined in the Act, but left to a series of regulatory codes produced by Ofcom. The Act defines only the utmost limits within which these codes can work. On May 28, 2010 Ofcom published a draft initial obligations code for consultation.^[7]
According to the Act Ofcom must produce "progress reports" once every three months on the levels of copyright infringement in the country, with a larger report coming once every 12 months.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010