A new proposal put forward by a Tory peer might see search engines like Google and Bing being exempted from copyright regulations and laws included in the Digital Economy Bill.

A document posted on the official website of the Parliament has revealed a list of 299 proposed amendments to the aforementioned bill, including one detailed by Lord Lucas which states, "Every provider of a publicly accessible website shall be presumed to give a standing and non-exclusive license to providers of search engine services to make a copy of some or all of the content of that website, for the purpose only of providing said search engine services".

The proposal has come in at a time when owner of the giant media New Corp empire, Rupert Murdoch is looking to ban Google from displaying content from his websites for free. However, if the proposed changes to the bill are introduced, Google would be immune to all such requests from News Corp. and other UK news sites.

This is not the first time that an aspect of the bill has managed to cause controversy. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has been one subject of controversies since he proposed contentious initiatives to cut off illegal file sharers from the internet.