Amendments to the Digital Economy Bill may see content generation sites such as YouTube, being forced to close, campaigners have announced.

BBC News reports that the government has been conquered in the House of Lords - over its plans to halt online privacy, after opponents from the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties commented that the original bill could affect digital innovation. The House of Lords passed the changes by 165 votes to 40.

The changes to the bill will give power to the High Court in issuing injunctions to sites which house ”substantial” amounts of copyright breaching content. Such changes have worried YouTube, who has been taken to task in the past by record labels and media agencies for hosting illegal video content.

The Telegraph reports that the proposed changes have angered internet freedom campaigners, who believe that many websites could shut down, due to the prospect of an expensive legal battle.

Executive director of the Open Rights Group, Jim Killock, announced the changes could mean smaller companies may suffer, saying: ”This would open the door to a massive imbalance of power in favour of large copyright holding companies, with individuals and small businesses open to massive copyright attacks that could shut them down.”

Meanwhile, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) agreed, commenting: ”We have been a long term advocate against any form of network-level blocking, as it is ineffective when applied to content that people are actively searching for.”

Sites such as Google and Facebook were also worried that changes to the bill will allow ministers to increasingly monitor user data, even if no illegal practises have been found to take place.

Lib Dem spokesman, Lord Clement Jones, defended the amended bill in a press release saying that ”there are several sites out there, which are based outside the UK and refuse to stop supplying access to illegal content.”

”This site blocking remedy would give rights holders an explicit, swift recourse to block access to those sites.”