£5 million a year for Ofcom's DE Act responsibilities - but Mr Vaizey was a little hazy about what it will pay for. He referred to monitoring activities. Ofcom's own slides reveal an expensive programme of p2p monitoring.

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The Communications Minister Ed Vaizey confirmed to Parliament that the budget for the telecoms regulator Ofcom, in respect of the Digital Economy Act (DE Act), is £5 million a year. That comes on top of £5.8 million for setting up its DE Act operations. The figure in itself is not new, as it was reported last year in a government document. However, Mr Vaizey added a statement on what the £5 million will cover. He said the £5 million a year is to cover Ofcom's "responsibilities" under the DE Act, which include :

"monitoring and enforcement

Read more: Ofcom's DE Act £5 million-a-year - for exactly what, Mr Vaizey?

UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ordered the telecoms regulator, Ofcom, to  review of the web blocking clauses in the Digital Economy Act. These clauses -  - 17 and 18 -  rely on secondary legislation to come into effect, and would give British courts the power to order the blocking of websites on application by rights-holders.

Mr Hunt  is claiming to be conducting the review in response to citizen opposition expressed on a government webiste - entitled  Your Freedom  - which sought to understand laws which people wanted repealed. On that basis, he has enlisted the support of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.

 However, the tone of the review announced by Mr Hunt yesterday, is quite the opposite. The aim of the review is not to understand the democratic

Read more: DE Act: is Jeremy Hunt extending it by the back-door?

The European Commission questions whether the DE Act cost-sharing is allowable under EU law. And Ofcom suggests that ISPs could give credit vouchers to the rights-holders if they send fewer warning notices than they forecast.

The Westminster Parliament is being asked to pass a law which has been critiqued by the European Commission and is potentially flawed. The matter relates to a Statutory Instrument (SI) setting out the sharing of costs between ISPs and rights-holders under the Digital Economy Ac copyright enforcement (graduated response) measures. It was laid before Parliament last week - as already reported on iptegrity.com. It's full title is the "Online Infringement of Copyright (Initial Obligations) (Sharing of Costs) Order 2011".

The (SI) was notified to the European Commission by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills under the usual procedures. However, the Commission has come back with a number of questions for BIS, which ought to be addressed befor Parliament can pass an opinion on it.

In a nutshell,

Read more: DE Act: should Parliament pass flawed ISP costs order?