Doesn't have a lot to do with the article, but they're not the LibDems™; they're the Lib Dems, or the Liberal Democrats. (Saying ‘LibDem’ isn't far off from saying DemoCrat or GrandOldParty)

Only one of the two lords was Lib Dem. The other was Conservative.

The lords are all such fuddy duddies they've eaten the copyright cartel's line that infringement is a crime endemic to the Internet and must be stopped to feed poor starving artists (and help the UK's creative economy).

Someone still needs to point out to them that the Emperor is actually naked, that the Internet is the biggest unauthorised reproduction and distribution machine the world has ever seem. To apply to the Internet an 18th century privilege intended to constrain seditious use of the mechanical printing press is an excellent example to use in defining the words 'anachronism', 'ineffective', and 'unethical'.

All we have to do is wait for the tide to come in and then King Canute can say "Told you so!".

If you're a LibDem or know LibDems headed to the conference this weekend, please urge support for this motion: help the LibDems get on the right side of the net-freedom debate!

Not true - the amendment was tabled by Lord Razzall and Lord Clement-Jones. Both Lib-Dems, and interestingly, both lawyers, one with a firm that specialises in copyright protection.

You're bang on with your other points though.

Thank you to Julian Huppert (Lib Dem candidate for Cambridge) and the others who put this to the Conference. This shows, after the bad show in the Lords, that sense about civil liberties wins out with the Lib Dems.

Thanks Anon #4. I stand corrected. I've always read this amendment was a joint effort by the Lib Dems and Tories, so assumed that 'joint' meant one lord each of the two lords proposing it.

It's the other sort of joint effort: the Lib Dems worked out a compromise deal with the Tories, to get them to vote against Labour's plans to let the Secretary of State rewrite copyright law at whim. While the proposal can (and probably will) be better, the bottom line is that it's horse trading to get the votes needed to stop something far worse. Without the Tories joining the Lib Dems in opposition, Labour really could push through a law that bad. (This is why parliamentary majorities are a problem, and we'd be better off without one.)

As with most compromise deals, nobody really likes it.

asuffield, it may well be that a clearly ridiculous amendment will foment far more opposition than an esoteric clause permitting the Secretary of State to do what people thought he could already do, i.e. change the law according to lobbyists' whim.

I said as much on Bridget Fox's Blog.

[Moderator: feel free to 'strike-out' the first sentence of my first comment, it being incorrect]

Lib Dems now have my paid membership. They deserve it just as much as ORG do, I think.

Of course there should be freedom of the net. But stopping political opponents by whatever means found necessary at the time, is nothing new. And it 'is' a political problem. People's internet facilities are already bugged, as are their telephone lines. And this applies to even miner threats. It will go on and on whatever the Lib-Dems say if parliamentary power thinks it is necessary. I dare say the Lib-Dems will do as the rest do when the times call for it; pragmatism after all is the name of the game. We seem to forget that we are also the most photographed nation on earth, surveillance cameras, etc, with the usual public safely excuses. It is no doubt a public safety excuse that is used for the Internet law change. You will answer, "Yes, but it 'is' helpful to public safely, preventing crime, etc." Crime is not any the less because of it. Whatever is put in place to keep a watch on the public, there will always be 'reasons' for it. And so we go step by step to perdition. The hangman and the criminal are two sides of the same coin. 'Rights' becomes a mere word to be bandied about for political purposes by every politician who feels it will adhance his image. When talking of people's 'rights' becomes politically 'inadvisable' and 'rights' are identified as mere leftiness and completely irrelevant in these 'new' times (which are really already upon us), then I'm sure the Lib-Dems like all the other political parties will know on what side their bread's buttered.
Whatever the Lib-Dems do or don't do seems only to ruffle the feathers of every labour bird that seeks to remain in its 'elected' nest. When the tories were in, the world resolved much the same as when the Labour was in before it: some richer some poorer. No one would deny that the Tories started the nation down the slippery slope of greed and individual capitalist selfishness (economically different from other sorts of selfishness), but has Labour altered course? I doubt if it could have gone as far as it has without the First Tory push in that direction, economically and politically. Thatcher was the prime mover here, it seems. But that's like blaming all tyranny on Hitler and assuming it stopped with him. Labout blames the Lib-Dems for a few fabourable utterences about Thatcher. Blair carried on her program and did more than she would ever have got off with! There is no honour today in espousing the cause of Labour. Parliament itself has become obnoxious: home to every wolf in sheeps clothing. Empty the prisons and crime will be no worse than it is. You can't get worse that it is with child kidnappings and murders and drugs and prostitution rife; even glorified. They are displayed on our home theatre boxs; the TV screen, as entertainment! I am surprised there is not more crime given the social conditions of deep class rifts that have deepened as parliament continues talking. Education is looked upon as something to aid one's position in society. I pity the new necessary sort of statesman who looks at the world, and wishing to alter its social course, cries with hamlet: "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!"
Zaramerz