The Internet and Privacy

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for initiating this debate. I should like to draw hon. Members’ attention to my declaration of interest. At heart, I am a libertarian. As a general rule, I abhor state interference. I believe in free markets and feel that Government tend to hinder rather than enhance enterprise and creativity. However, I will argue today that some Government interference and regulation are essential. I am certainly against any information being stored about me without specific consent. That seems obvious and the Government should quickly address the matter through regulation.

My contribution to this debate is to do with intellectual property, piracy, the balancing of civil liberties with individual freedoms, and the protection of copyright holders. In September, I attended a week-long forum organised by the UN on worldwide internet governance. To some hon. Members, that may not seem like a lively and riveting subject, and, to be honest, parts of it were a little dry. None the less, there was some very interesting information to take away. The attendees were from a wide background. They were internet technical specialists, civil servants, pressure groups and so on. Disappointingly, there were few Government Ministers or Members of Parliament from around the world, other than some from east Africa and six from the UK Parliament. The pirate party from Sweden was also represented. That latter inclusion gives a flavour of what the debates tended to centre on.

Many groups were quite rightly concerned about child protection issues. Other than that, however, there was a general feeling that the internet should be totally free and that any regulation should be resisted, especially Government-type controls. However, it is my belief that that is a recipe for disaster. The internet is all-powerful, with an increasing flow of digital information, be it written, musical, on video or pictorial. It is providing for a world economy that is both fast-reacting and, for some, increasingly obscure. Anomalies are already showing up, as we have heard. At the forum, we learned that India does not have a data protection Act, so data stored there are not under the same rules and regulations as they are here.

However, the biggest threat to commerce and innovation is where creative works can become “owned” by users of the internet, rather than those who are creating the works. As we know, file sharing has become rife. At the forum, the prevailing view was that music downloads cannot be stopped, so we should let people get on with it. That is simply nonsense. Certainly, business models need to change so that musicians can recover revenues in different ways, such as on live tours. However, if all creative works are suddenly to be public property, our creative industries are at risk.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is not simply that the internet, or search engines such as Google, are allowing free access to such work; as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) mentioned, they are a making a profit from such access, and are making money from aggregating other people’s content.

[Mike Weatherley]

Indeed, and to add to my hon. Friend’s point, the money that is being made is not finding its way to the owners of the creative works. Let me give a quick example from Spain, where there is a free-for-all internet culture. Various leading movie studios are actively considering banning DVD sales in that country. Sales of DVDs fell six times faster in Spain than in the rest of Europe. There were 2.4 billion unauthorised downloads of music and movies, which represents 50 downloads per Spaniard, which is just huge. Unfortunately, the UK is going in the same direction.

There must be reward for inventors and artists to enable those sectors to flourish. We cannot allow the UK music industry to be decimated. I have submitted some parliamentary written questions to discover just how important our overseas earnings from music are to our economy, and to find out how many jobs are involved. I do not need the reply to know that the figure is very high indeed.

The Digital Economy Act 2010, which has been referred to, has started to recognise the problem, and the Gowers report made a firm commitment to protecting copyright owners. However, favourable reports will not save the situation if there is not some control of the internet by a responsible governing body that looks out for the interests of creative individuals. The Digital Economy Act has flaws, and the appeals process is one such flaw. However, what the Act does is enshrine the right of individuals not to have their works stolen. I therefore commend my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for initiating this debate.

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[Ian Lucas]

We should certainly consider that approach. However, I was going to conclude that I do not think that it will be sufficient; I think that some other Members have also taken that view. Self-regulation in media organisations has not had a happy time recently in the United Kingdom. The Press Complaints Commission comes immediately to mind; it has failed badly in the News of the World inquiry and case. I am suspicious of over-mighty international media organisations. What happened in that context—there was a regulator and a voluntary regulatory system—could certainly recur in the case of an organisation such as Google, for example, about which we have heard a lot in this debate. Google is a powerful, rich and monopolistic organisation. What happens in a self-regulatory system where the powerful, over-mighty subject ignores the regulator?

[Damian Collins]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that the problems that he is describing are endemic in all large organisations that handle large amounts of personal data, whether they are search engines, mobile phone companies or banks? It takes only a certain number of rogue employees to release for personal gain private information to which they are privy. The steps that a company can take to protect itself from that are serious, but also complex.

[Ian Lucas]

Indeed. One problem with a Law Society or BMA model, with respect to the hon. Member for Harlow, is that although that would be an appropriate way to proceed for some of the organisations involved in collecting such information—they are responsible professional organisations and would act responsibly—unfortunately, it would not be appropriate for all. Other organisations might take a much more laissez-faire approach—if I dare use that phrase in the presence of so many Conservatives—and would not deal with the issue responsibly. I am concerned that a self-regulatory system might not be as effective as we would like.

[Ian Lucas]

That may be. We are at the beginning of a debate, and I am setting out my personal views at this juncture. When I conclude, I will agree that we need to examine the matter in more detail, but those are my concerns about a self-regulatory framework. With fines, for example, it is difficult to create an effective system that imposes large financial penalties on companies that do not wish to pay them. If the fines involve hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds, only the force of law will be sufficient to ensure that the necessary action is taken.

[Damian Collins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. He is right about fines, but I think that it is possible. I speak from experience, having worked in the advertising industry. An advertiser that breaks the Advertising Standards Authority code may be forced to withdraw an advert that it might have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds making. That is why self-regulation and enforcement of the code are effective in the advertising industry. In the case of the Press Complaints Commission, by contrast, a slap on the wrist or an article in a newspaper is a small price to pay.

[Ian Lucas]

That may be the case. We can discuss it as the conversation continues beyond this debate. The hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), who is no longer in his place—he seems to have disappeared—pointed out a moment ago that information belongs to the individuals who give it in the first place. That is a strong point.

Part of the problem with the issue is that when people use their computers—this certainly applies to me; I am not a geek of the type described by the hon. Member for Cambridge—it does not always occur to them that they are passing on to a third party which books they like or what articles they are interested in. I think that most people are in that position. They concentrate on what they are using the internet for, and it is incidental to them that that information is being secured by a third party. I think that they would be shocked to learn that it was being traded for marketing purposes. The difficulty is that that process is already happening, because people are using the internet and have been for such a long time.

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[Mr Vaizey]

I think that that would be a breach of my official’s privacy.

I shall turn briefly to Facebook and the consumer’s right to privacy. As I have already talked about the personal information online code of practice, hon. Members will be aware that there was great controversy earlier in the year about Facebook, because its privacy settings were seen as unclear. Its default settings put one in the public space as opposed to the private space, so, suddenly, one had to opt out of rather than into that sphere. I am delighted to say that Facebook has been working closely with colleagues at the Department for Education and is now a member of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, as is Google and BlackBerry. As such, it follows the good practice guidance—produced to guide companies that provide internet services popular with children and young people—about what additional safeguards it can put in place to protect children online and provide a positive online experience. The guidance includes advice on companies’ obligations to ensure the privacy of their users’ information and on options and settings they can provide users to protect privacy further, and it recommends making information on safety and privacy easily accessible to users, so they understand the privacy options available. The UKCCIS continues to work with companies providing internet services used by children, including Facebook, to improve safeguards, including safeguarding their privacy.

On scraping and cookies, as I am sure hon. Members are aware, a cookie is a piece of text stored by a user’s web browser. There are many uses for cookies, including authentication, storing site preferences and shopping cart contents and as the identifier for a server-based session. Cookies are also used to speed up the user’s web browser as they help to remember the settings and options used the last time a website or page was visited. They have been a hot topic for some time. At the moment, information obtained through cookies can be used to categorise users’ internet interests to serve adverts that match broad interest categories, though the user should be able to refuse the import of cookies on to their machines. Clearly, that has commercial benefits, and, indeed, benefits to the individual—we should not be shy about saying that, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire was clear about the benefits of targeted marketing to individuals. However, organisations have to ensure that users are aware that they are collecting such information and know why.

The revised e-privacy directive will give users greater control by requiring organisations to get their agreement before the information is collected.

[Damian Collins]

A campaign called Cookies for Kids raised that issue in the United States. Should there be greater restrictions on the use of cookies for information given by minors?

[Mr Vaizey]

In terms of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, I think that the issue needs to be addressed. As a matter of principle, we all accept that children deserve greater protection than adults do, whether offline or when accessing content online. We will continue to look at that.

Let us make no bones about it. As the hon. Member for Bath made clear, the key issue is not necessarily the harvesting of data on shopping habits, but the harvesting of data without consent or knowledge. There are some who say for example that Phorm, the company with which BT carried out an experiment, was providing a perfectly legitimate commercial service in allowing organisations to monetise their presence on the web by targeting adverts at certain consumers; if a consumer is particularly interested in a type of car, that advert could appear on screen while they are reading a web page. The website—for example, The Guardian or The Observer—could charge more for that advertisement and, therefore, monetise its online content. That is a legitimate argument, but huge concern was generated because there was no transparency. It was done without consumers’ knowledge and it was unknown what would happen to the data once they were collected or whether they would be transferred to third parties. At the heart of the debate is, above all, transparency over what data organisations harvest and the opportunity for the consumer to choose to opt in.