“In a year when the iPod moment for books looks increasingly likely to happen,” writes journalist Danuta Kean, “failure to pass the Digital Economy Bill isn’t a lost opportunity, it’s a tragedy.”

What’s the Digital Economy Bill? It’s a piece of legislation aimed at regulating the nascent British e-book business. A key provision is a three-strikes-you’re out clause aimed at terminating Internet access for file-sharing e-book pirates. Copyright theft has contributed to a 30% drop in music revenues over the past six years and the bill’s framers want to nip it in the bud before it does the same to books.

Slam dunk, right? Wrong. The House of Lords is not happy with it. It seems that libraries, businesses and other institutions are worried that they will be culpable for the felonious behavior of individual users. The British Library, for instance, noted that “Because public institutions often provide internet access to hundreds or thousands of individual users, the complexity of our position in relation to copyright infringements must be taken into consideration.” Which is a civilized way of saying the Brits are afraid to punish e-thieves.

Kean expressed her frustration with milords this way: “Well, hello! If it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t be a punishment.”

“Those who claim file-sharing is a blow against big business that does not harm small, independent players, should think again,” she says citing plummeting music sales in nations lax on piracy. “Ah but books are different, you might think. Well, no. A study released last month by Attributor, whose FairShare Guardian service monitors the internet for pirated content, provided startling data on the impact of file-sharing on books. It estimated that publishers were losing as much as $3bn to online book piracy. You didn’t misread that: it said three BILLION dollars, more than the total value of the UK book market. As more readers move to digital formats, that figure will only get worse.”

What happens in UK could well affect what happens in US, so we’ll be following this unfolding story with keen interest. Here it is in detail: If the Digital Economy Bill fails, we’ll all pay.

Richard Curtis