Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Regulations 2014

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in this debate. I was a member of the Select Committee that produced the report to which reference has been made. I agreed with the contents of that report wholeheartedly and recommended the forcefulness of the views expressed in it to your Lordships.

The importance of this is plain. There are a number of individuals who create copyright works on which they rely for their livelihood. They are entitled at the moment to the protection of the law of copyright so that the work they have brought into existence is not taken advantage of by others, without reward for them. The regulations now before the House will have a very serious effect indeed on people of that sort.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and others that this is a change in the law that would have been better brought about—if it was to be brought about at all—by primary legislation. The House could have gone into Committee and amendments could have been put forward and fully debated. To use regulations to bring about a change in the law of this extent seems to me a misuse of the legislative procedure that has been adopted.

I do not want to add to what the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley of Knighton said. I agree with what they said but want to draw attention to the aspect of contract override, which was discussed in the Select Committee. The Minister who gave evidence to the Select Committee was the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, accompanied by Ms Heyes. He defended the legislative proposals that your Lordships are now considering and raised the matter of contract override. He and Ms Heyes informed the Select Committee that the effect of the provisions in the regulations,

“would not be retrospective, but would apply only to new contracts; and that the provisions were precedented, inasmuch as an existing exception allowing material to be photocopied in schools could not be overridden by contractual terms”.

However, we are not talking now about education but about private use.

The text of the private use regulation does not confirm the assurance that we thought was given by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, that the provisions,

“would not be retrospective, but would apply only to new contracts”.

However, in Regulation 3, new Section 28B(10) of the relevant Act states:

“To the extent that a term of a contract purports to prevent or restrict the making of a copy which, by virtue of this section, would not infringe copyright, that term is unenforceable”,

so it is retrospective. It would apply to negate the content of contracts that have been entered into, perhaps since the Minister appeared before the Select Committee in May and gave the assurance to which I have referred, which is set out in the report. That assurance may have been relied on but the proposition that this retrospection can now be incorporated in the regulations seems to me quite wrong. I hope that the Minister will comment on that when she replies to the debate.

The proposition that personal use copying should be permitted and should be free from any copyright infringement is obviously a very important one for all producers of copyright material. What does personal use mean? Does it mean that it would be a breach of copyright for the person who acquires a copyright work to copy it for the benefit of his children? Presumably, that would not be his personal use. How would the personal use limitation be enforced? How could the copyright proprietor possibly know what was being done with his copyright work by the person entitled to copy it for his personal use? Can you copy it and give it to friends as Christmas presents or give it to your children to take to school to show their school friends?

I respectfully suggest that it is not a satisfactory limitation at all. I suggest that this is precisely the sort of legislation that ought to have been referred to Committee to be gone over paragraph by paragraph, with amendments being put forward, discussed and voted on. I thoroughly support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for presenting the statutory instruments but I agree with everyone else who has spoken. I have real doubts about what they will mean for the creative industries. I know that her predecessor noted how much consultation had taken place round the issue, and my noble friend Lord Stevenson made the same point. The history of this is very long, and we are left asking if after all those years of consultation and all those meetings, with everyone being opposed to it, what is it doing here in the House about to be passed? Consultation has an element of taking people with you, or persuading people and putting them in the position of seeing the strength of the argument. That has not happened in the sector, which is the sadness of today. As it is not primary legislation we know that it will go through at the end of this debate, and in terms of a responsible House and good-quality legislation that is to be very much regretted.

I have two points to make on a particular aspect of the statutory instrument, but before doing so I declare an interest as a director of the Performing Rights Society and, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which considered this legislation. I agree with the Minister that we need to bring the position up to date. I can see that the legislation looks old fashioned and is not fit for purpose, but people are unwittingly breaking the law day after day. It is not an argument against bringing legislation to the Houses of Parliament but an argument against the detail. If we take the example that we have to make it legal for somebody to download or transfer information from their CD to their iPod, I cannot disagree with that. It is what happens and it makes sense. It is allowing the user to take advantage of new technology and I do not think that many rights holders would complain about that.

I want to concentrate on the fact that the statutory instrument extends the right to private copying to the cloud service. This is new technology. A lot of the other private copying exceptions that have been given as examples are not about new technology; it is legislation catching up with the past. With the cloud service—locker service being new technology—this statutory instrument will set the framework for this technology for many years to come. It is a golden opportunity. New technology is not within the legal framework of protecting rights, so this is our chance to ensure that the signals we give do not repeat earlier errors of a creative sector that is not in line with the technology and the way in which people want to use it.

I know that the statutory instrument says what is not allowed—but ask anyone in the film industry about how it has suffered from what was not legally allowed but what was easy to happen. In introducing the debate the Minister said that it is quite clear in cloud technology that it is for personal use only and does not allow friends, family or anyone else to use it. However, it is easy to happen. We will see exactly what happened in the film and music industries. Half the world will say it is illegal and the other half will say that it is easy and everyone does it, so it will continue. To introduce that for new technology with cloud services is a wasted opportunity. I wonder whether the Minister realises the full range of services operated by the cloud locker services. With Dropbox, which many people access now, it is so easy to share information and data with other people. It is almost possible to do it inadvertently or by accident. It is almost that easy that people will assume that that is what the technology is for.

Now is the time to give a message, but is there education on this? Is there any good-quality information in the guidance that goes with the legislation about how this should be interpreted and what should happen? There is not. Why have the Government not put an obligation on the people who run cloud locker services to provide information to customers about what they can or cannot legally do? None of that happens but there is legislation, which includes in its title,

“Personal Copies for Private Use”,

and which by its lack of understanding of the cloud locker services gives the message that it is possible. We have missed the opportunity to give a message about what is and what is not legal. Moreover, we have given the opposite message that copying is possible with this new technology.