Before Clause 4, Lord Lucas brought in Amendment 15 to deal with ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons - and Tilly Bailey & Irvine, apparently - who are law firms that... you know what, I'll just let Lord Lucas explain it:

"The game works roughly like this. You find an owner of an obscure bit of copyright that is available on the internet, preferably something pornographic and extremely nasty. You then employ a piece of software whose innards have never been exposed to the public, or tested in a court, to produce allegations that a particular set of IP addresses have made that copyright material available for upload over the internet. You then take tens of thousand of these cases to court and, using a Norwich Pharmacal order, obtain the details of the relevant subscribers from their internet service providers. You then write them a letter, which has basically three elements to it. First, it says: "You have committed this transgression of copyright". Secondly, it says: "If you force us to take you to court, we will pursue you for a very large sum of money". Thirdly, it says: "But we offer you this opportunity to settle for a mere £500 or £800" - or whatever the figure is - "and we will forget all about the perils of court and the vast sums for which you might otherwise be liable, because basically we are very good people, and all that we are seeking to do is to protect our copyright"". I couldn't put it better myself.

We saw about this in Committee, but here is a concrete solution to the problem. Baroness Howe of Idlicote described them as "so-called solicitors", and said that it "has to be dealt with and is disgraceful". Lord Whitty made a good point that the public's acceptance "of the future system proposed in the Bill would be aided if these abuses were cleared out of the existing system".

Lord Howard of Rising made sure he got a word in before Lord Young of Norwood Green made his response. He was more cautious, and hoped that "nothing that is put in the Bill prevents rights holders from using civil proceedings". From the government side, Lord Young said "there is nothing between us on the problem" (a diplomatic way of saying he agrees with everyone, though he won't explicitly use the same kind of language as Baroness Howe). He compared the firms to "rogue wheel-clampers, if I can use that analogy". Lord Lucas sees the connection with the analogy: these law firms practise "an abuse that has some justification in fundamental law. Rogue wheel-clampers are merely enforcing their rights of private property. I suppose that bailiffs are doing an excellent job in retrieving lots of money for the public purse and for creditors". The government insisted that the Solicitors Regulation Authority should take care of this instead of the government (though they've not done much about it so far).

There were a funny couple of gaffes amongst all this: Lord Young (Labour) described Lord Howard (Tory) as "my noble - I nearly said friend - the noble Lord, Lord Howard". For those who don't know, the convention in the Lords is to refer to others in your party as 'my noble friend' and those from other parties as 'the noble Lord'. This happened again later, but I've forgotten who said it and when. Sorry.

Lord Puttnam voiced his displeasure at the entire Bill, given the way it's been debated. He said that the worst part was "how much of the time was spent arguing over and discussing things that could so easily have been dealt with by a small group of peers from all parts of the House. If there is one great lesson to take away, it is that the House should not accept Bills like this without provision for pre-legislative scrutiny". The final Bill that would leave the Lords "is a Bill that none of us is particularly proud of. It will be a spatchcock [rush job] that does part of the work it was intended to do but not all of it. I am absolutely convinced that, within the next two or three years, there will be another Bill before this House which will be created to deal with the deficiencies of the present Bill". In other words, the Bill sucks. Strong words indeed.

Lord Puttnam was talking about an amendment by Lord Whitty that suggested the purpose of the Bill is to encourage legal activity, not simply to punish unlawful activity. This idea had been mentioned by Lord Lucas at Committee. Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer agreed that the government's education process should've got underway a long time ago - indeed, this Bill should've been done a long time ago. Lord Maxton mentioned "a company called 3B Software which offers for a small annual sum of about £30 unlimited access to television stations round the world and to as many films as I want to watch. If I am paying, is it legal? I do not know". He again made the megabytes/megabits mistake, which someone really ought to mention, though I'm sure (or I hope) anyone drafting the Bill will not be confused by it.

The Earl of Erroll tore into proceedings by asking, "What message are we are trying to get out?" He said we might as well just do things the ACS:Law way - since both front benches want to keep that possibility - but take serious offenders to court. Otherwise, the Bill is just "frighten[ing] minor offenders". Since the amendment specifies the whole reason of doing this, the Earl said that it was an essential amendment, and without it, "this Bill, to be honest, will be ridiculed".

Amidst Lord Young's insistence that the Bill is educational, Lord Whitty (also Labour) didn't agree. He said that the "first letter a subscriber gets is, "It appears that an infringement has taken place". That is not education. It may turn out that he will learn something from it, but it is not education. It is a threat. The problem with this approach is that it is a serious threat". He went on later to point out that "if a policeman knocks on my door and says, "It looks as if you've got some dodgy gear in your shed", I consider that is an implication of guilt". For all the sweetness and light that the government is projecting, he has a point - and he's on the same bloody side.

Clause 4 : Obligation to notify subscribers of reported infringements. Several amendments were agreed to from the government, Amendments 19 to 21, 23 to 25, 27 and 29 specifically, all relating to the issuing of copyright infringement reports (CIRs). There were a couple of other amendments tabled, one of which suggested action to take if there were "financial gain" to be had from the copyright infringement. Lord Young felt this was unnecessary as it's "easier and simpler when there is money involved since, if somebody is making money from copyright infringement, it becomes a criminal offence" - so the 'softly, softly' approach in the Bill isn't necessary.