Digital Economy Bill

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, Amendment 19 fulfils a manifesto commitment to enhance the public lending right by extending it so that authors of e-books and audiobooks have the right to receive payment from a government fund for the remote lending of these books from public libraries across the UK. The new clause also amends the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to enable rights holders to include appropriate terms in respect of e-books and e-audiobooks to reflect the differences between digital and physical books and ensure that e-lending by public libraries mirrors physical lending. This will mean that current protections for authors, publishers and booksellers can be maintained. The Government have been pressed to make this amendment throughout the passage of the Bill in both Houses. I reassure the House that it has always been our intention to deliver on our commitments to authors as soon as possible.

In preparing this amendment, we have had to await the outcome of litigation, and we have discussed the matter in depth with lenders, publishers and authors. I am pleased that the sector supports our approach; it has also reiterated its shared commitment to support a strong book sector, reading and literacy, including by supporting public access to e-books as well as physical books and audiobooks through libraries. I put on record the Government’s thanks to the sector representatives, and I hope that they will continue to work closely with the Government to successfully implement these changes and support the Government’s manifesto commitment to ensure remote access to e-books for public library users. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken on this issue. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the Government on introducing this amendment, for which authors will be very grateful indeed. Credit should go to the groups and associations that have campaigned for this change, including the Society of Authors and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, which have both campaigned on this issue for some time.

I have just one issue with the wording of the Government’s amendment. The Society of Authors briefing argues that it would be clearer if the words, “for the purpose of library lending” were added to “lawfully acquired” in line 32. This clarification is in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. The phrase “lawfully acquired” hangs there by itself and although it might be argued that it is implied that the acquisition is for library lending, that is not absolutely clear. It should be stressed that all interested parties were in agreement about this and would be happier if this clarification were made. Will the Minister promise to look at this before Third Reading and see if it can be tweaked?

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I add my voice to the thanks offered to the Minister by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for having now included this amendment, albeit there are some questions to be asked. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us why the wording is rather different from that in the amendment we put down in Committee. Those differences need to be accounted for but this is a good way of delivering on a commitment that the Government made. It is really the final fruits of the Sieghart report and will be strongly welcomed by authors and writers across the country. We all value the public lending right, which makes a small but very significant addition to the income of authors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, in Committee I explained the importance to authors and other creators of transparency, and the significance of the proposed new EU directive. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, got the point entirely, as ever, and said the amendment would require those organisations exploiting copyright works via licences to provide the relevant creators with regular information on the use and the revenue they generate, and stated that this obligation could be met by complying with a code of practice determined at sector level, which is entirely correct.

I should add for clarity that, if there is a concern by licensees in those circumstances about the leakage of their commercially sensitive information, the way information is channelled can of course be dictated by a code of conduct through appropriate mechanisms, such as the advisers of creators and so forth. That is could be well catered for if there were concerns among those licensees or assignees.

The Minister confirmed that the Government were already engaged in discussions to address this issue. She said that,

“the UK will actively engage in these debates … before considering the case for domestic intervention”.

She also said,

“it is worth giving careful consideration to the part that these industry-led initiatives can play”,—[Official Report, 6/2/17; col. 1481.]

in terms of a code of conduct and so on. As I said at the time, though, she never actually agreed that the principle of transparency should be incorporated into law, whether directly or by transposition. Clearly, if the EU directive is passed within the two-year period after notice of Brexit is given, it may well be incorporated into UK law. The Minister gave encouragement to the principle but did not say that the Government fully supported that element of the directive. Article 14 of the draft directive is very clear in giving creators those kinds of transparency rights.

So I return to the fray on this occasion, and I hope the Minister can warm her words further in the face of this amendment being retabled. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. He talked about the principle of transparency, and that is the nub of it. I shall just give an example: the history of pop music has, in many ways, been the history of exploitation of artists in a bad way. Much of that exploitation was based, in the past, on keeping artists in the dark. I am sure that today many licensees and transferees—some of which are huge companies—behave very well, but there is a systemic imbalance here, which means that there is potential for abuse. Artists have a fundamental right to information about exploitation of their work, which is, in any case, useful for knowing quite simply what has happened to their work when it is pushed out into the world.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for raising this again today. As both previous speakers have said, it is a really important issue for authors, writers and musicians, who are operating in an increasingly complex world where it is very hard to keep tabs on the use that is being put to their own creative work and the way it is being distributed and accessed. As a result, many in the sector feel that they are not properly rewarded for their creative endeavour. It is obviously crucial to us that we encourage them to continue to be creative and help them to be fairly rewarded because, as we increasingly begin to recognise, that creativity is not only important to them but will be an essential bedrock of the UK’s future prosperity in the years to come.

The noble Lord quite rightly raised the issue of the draft directive on copyright, and he quoted the Minister’s reliance on the discussions of that draft in her response in Committee. However, as with other pieces of draft EU legislation, there is now a horrible feeling that the clock is ticking and that time might run out before the directive can be transposed into UK law. Therefore, we very much support the noble Lord in his bid to bring more certainty to the lives, and the incomes, of our much-valued creators.

I would like to raise two further points. First, the amendments as they stand assume that all publishers have the facility to provide regular statements of income outside the normal accounting periods. This is indeed easy for the large publishers, which already have author portals where this kind of detailed information is uploaded in real time and accessible to authors and their agents on a daily basis. However, we should also spare a thought for the smaller publishing houses, whose growth we also want to encourage, and which might not have such sophisticated accounting systems. The wording of the amendments might be rather too prescriptive or open to interpretation in this regard. We do not want to add too much of an extra burden to those smaller organisations.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the amendments do very little to help those authors who are beholden to Amazon, which publishes 90% of e-books and is responsible for a significant proportion of physical book sales. Its behaviour in driving down prices through heavy discounting is seriously damaging the incomes of authors and publishers alike. Therefore, you can have transparency and fairness, but we will not add much more value back into the creative sector unless steps are taken to curb the monopolistic behaviour of Amazon. Perhaps the Minister could advise us as to what steps are being taken to monitor that increasing dominance of Amazon and to look at the impact it is having on the income of people who are trying to be creative and whom we very much want to value. At what stage would the Government take steps to intervene to make sure that those incomes are, in some way, protected for the future?