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It has been passed. In just a matter of hours, the House of Commons has crossed a threshold that many internet advocates feel that the government should have never done. Anyway, regardless of all the previously big arguments for and against the bill, the fact of the matter is that it has already been passed and there is nothing that can be done about it. What this means is that people will have to find ways of continuing to use the internet while keeping under the rules of the law.

File sharing websites will now be closely watched and monitored, while the portion of the bill which would have totally banned all file sharing sites was not approved, there is still the government power to declare any web service as a tool for the illegal sharing of copyrighted media and as such, would still be able to forcibly ban access to such sites.

Users will now be under the eye of ISP providers, who are under threat of a major fine if they fail to discourage and prevent users from illegally sharing media content. Many believe that many of these providers would be investing (or rather, wasting) plenty of resources in order to keep up with the monitoring of thousands of users.

The only silver lining here is that the changes are not expected to be in effect anytime soon. Some estimates place the first major changes to happen after two years, others believe that many businesses will take advantage of legal red tape to even further delay the implementations.

As for the effectiveness of the bill, there is much doubt that it would actually stop piracy at all, if anything, the bill would further encourage pirates to improve their file sharing methods.

Read more about how the Digital Economy Bill will change the way you access the internet at This is Money UK.

Many critics are already opposing the upcoming Digital Economy Bill, with such a rushed process, many believe that the bill will be passed without adequate debate and study –something that the lobbyists are avoiding since the Bill’s part about preventing piracy by controlling the internet is a very flawed assumption.

The Bill would actually cause a lot of trouble if it pushes through. First off, owners of internet cafes and locations with free WiFi would close down by themselves. As the government will now hold owners of networks as responsible for anything that goes on in their connections, giving free WiFi services would be too risky and difficult to manage.

Even worse is the fact that it will open up data packets sent to the government. These bits of data contain chunks of information including content for emails and other private correspondences –it will potentially undermine the rights to privacy in terms of home and communication.

So far, the section about preventing piracy is still sketchy, most of the details simply dictate how much control officials will have in terms of monitoring activities and in filtering internet accessibility.

There are some positive aspects to the Bill that we would still like to see on April; biggest of these is the proposed tax break for game developers. As many are already aware, the video game industry is pretty big and highly competitive –games now cost as much as a movie to produce, and with almost the same degree of talent and manpower required.

BAFTA already recognizes the creative effort that is needed to make a game and it is about time that the government does too. If this pushes through, then many UK based award winning developers like Media Molecule would be able to rise.

Read more about the new Digital Bill at TechWatch UK.