Digital Economy Bill and Lib Dem policy making

There is an excellent debate going on over on Lib Dem Voice about the Digital Economy Bill. The main post I am linking to here is the detail of a response to 25 Lib Dem PPCs who wrote an open letter about amendments made by Lib Dem peers to this bill which strike me and many other as not being very liberal.

It's well worth reading through all the comments as there are some extremely well informed and detailed contributions pretty much all outlining liberal approaches to this problem. Although it was disappointing to see the rather illiberal amendments the other day it is immensely satisfying to see how robustly the party membership and activists have responded to this with some well thought out and constructive contributions.

Being in a party that still has democratic policy making procedures and the associated debates that go with this makes me very glad I am a member. Although the media often portray these as "splits" it is in fact a function of a healthy democratic party that we debate these things in the open like this.

Hopefully the result of all of this will be a change to the currently tabled amendments.