Clause 5 : Obligation to provide infringement lists to copyright owners. Just one amendment here, from the government, which stipulates that subscribers won't suffer a copyright infringement report (CIR) until they've actually reached an infringement 'threshold'. If everyone got a report on them, it'd probably result in a lot of wasted money, as they only really want to target the serious offenders. A good amendment.

After Clause 5, Lord Lucas suggested including consumer advice in the Bill, as the government hopes to educate people in how to stop people hacking their routers, for example. He said that his was, apparently, insecure, despite the fact that he bought it "at PC World, as it was one of the nicest looking ones around and did everything that was required of it". Lord Howard of Rising resisted "asking [the Minister] what a good-looking router looks like". Chortle. Although it's a nice idea, I agree with Lord Young of Norwood Green's insistence that this isn't Ofcom's job, as ISPs and organisations such as Which? are much better at doing this.

Clause 6 : Approval of code about the initial obligations. The questions here were chiefly on the subject of public internet providers, such as web-cafés, "libraries and educational establishments", and how the regulations would affect them. The Earl of Erroll has "a vision of the future where we can roam around the place, connecting freely wherever you are and working from wherever you need to work. If for some reason-such as transport difficulties, heavy snow or a terrorist threat-you cannot get into work, you can work from some other access point that you happen to get to. You may get halfway there and then log in". He said it would be rather sad if the government stopped this brave new world at the whim of copyright holders.

The government's response was that these providers already try to stop stuff like P2P file sharing, and as long as they carry on doing so, everything will be fine. Other than that, government Amendments 38 and 39 were agreed, and Lord Howard of Rising got a bit mixed up.

Clause 7 : Initial obligations code by OFCOM in the absence of an approved code. Lord Clement-Jones was curious about Ofcom being given a bit of time to get a code together, but the government reassured him that it's not that big a deal. They passed their Amendment 47 also.

Clause 8 : Contents of initial obligations code. Amendments 49 and 50 were agreed to immediately. They passed their Amendment 51 too, but Lord Whitty wasn't too happy with it. The idea of an appeals body imposing sanctions on people instead of a court rankles with the Lord, and he was unhappy with the very idea of this. Lord Lucas suggested he take out his frustrations with the latest advice, that being to "stab the upholstery with a felt-tip pen. I do not know how well that would go down here, but there is a lot of good upholstery". I have no idea what he's referring to, but it doesn't surprise me from Lord Lucas.

After agreeing to Amendment 52 in Clause 8, debates continued on 3 March, two days later.

This was the big one: the moment I'd been waiting for since Committee began. Lord Clement-Jones tabled an amendment to Clause 8 which paved the way for killing off the dreaded Clause 17. This amendment, number 54A, was designed primarily to "ensure a proper debate in prime time in this House of the merits of Clause 17 and our proposed substitute for it", as this was only the second amendment debated on that day.

Lord Clement-Jones came out in force with a lengthy speech on why Clause 17 should be removed, and it was clear from Committee that the Lib Dems, Tories and also Crossbenchers (people like the Earl of Erroll and Baroness Howe of Idlicote who are not linked to a party) wanted to remove it. Lord Clement-Jones's speech started by saying that it's "clear that infringement is taking place in both peer-to-peer and non-peer-to-peer environments", referring to "cyberblockers" - I think he means 'cyberlockers', like Rapidshare and Megaupload. The Bill has focused on P2P - or, Bittorrent, in other words, since that's by far the most common - and the 'future-proofing' that the government is trying to get by allowing the Secretary of State to simply change copyright law on a whim is what everyone is opposed to. Rather than future-proofing, Lord Clement-Jones thinks we need "present-proofing" first. A large amount of copyright infringement takes place in non-P2P environments, so why not try to tackle it? File-sharing is "only one part of the problem".

The main thrust of the amendment was to block websites, which Lord Clement-Jones thought would be easier and less risky than allowing changes to copyright law. This could prove controversial still, of course, but probably less controversial than Clause 17 would be. Lord Young of Norwood Green came out fighting - though not too hard as he had "problems with my hip". Lord Clement-Jones had compared this plan to the actions of blocking websites that have child abuse images, but Lord Young dismissed this analogy, given the tiny amount of websites with child abuse images. He said that "as many as 6 million or 7 million people may be infringing copyright online, and probably thousands of sites are involved... we should make sure that if we are going to make analogies, they can stand examination and scrutiny. With due respect, I do not believe that the analogy quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, can stand that scrutiny". Ouch.

The Minister strongly rejected the proposals by Lord Clement-Jones and insisted that the government's proposal was the right one. He said that after taking notice of the concerns expressed in Committee, their new amendment "provides accountability in both Houses, and it gives both Houses the right to reject if they do not believe that a government proposal is appropriate", so it wouldn't be right to replace it with something completely different. The Earl of Erroll agreed with the Minister, but he still wanted to get rid of Clause 17. He understood why Amendment 120A (the proposed replacement for Clause 17) was being proposed, but "this is too late a stage to insert it. This needs to go out to the whole industry for discussion first, so that we can find all the pitfalls. I have described the pitfalls that I spotted in 10 minutes of reading on this Bench. If I can do that, what could the whole industry do?" What, indeed.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer was of the opinion that "such changes to the way that the internet is used in terms of filtering and blocking should not be undertaken without the other place having full opportunity to scrutinise them, which they will not have". Lord Puttnam, who is in favour of Clause 17, argued that, whether or not the 'super-affirmative' procedure advocated in Clause 17 is the best way of getting legislation, "we have to find a better, more effective, more efficient and speedier way of dealing with the kind of problem that the Bill overall is attempting to address". Nevertheless, Lord Clement-Jones tested the opinion of the House in a division, and the result was probably the most interesting thing that's happening in the whole process of the Bill: 165 Contents beat 140 Not-Contents to include this in the Bill, which obviously meant that when it came to removing Clause 17, it would be done without argument. Well, there you have it.

Amendments 55 to 66 (not including 57) were passed quickly from the government, but the damage had been done.