Earl of Erroll
Main Page: Earl of Erroll (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Earl of Erroll Excerpts
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in this amendment. It is extremely sensible, very simple and allows for flexibility, which is what we want. The concept of licensing for orphan works and for extended collective licensing is important if we are to disseminate things that we want to do and see. More and more programmes, books and so forth now dwell on our recent past. In this case, “recent”, when it comes to copyright, means the lifetime of the author plus 70 years.
The situation gets confusing. First, if one of your Lordships were to send someone a postcard, the copyright—wherever that postcard ends up and whoever buys and sells it and owns it later—would subsist for their lifetime plus 70 years. The next confusion is the assumption that copyright resides with the person who wrote the document. Let us suppose that someone tries to produce a study of an incident that happened between the wars. Indeed, a similar issue arose the other day when someone asked whether they could use a letter from my great-grandfather and whether I would grant copyright. There is a certain technical problem. I presume that they had looked at all the wills between my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my mother and myself to find out that I was the residual legatee; or that each was the residual legatee of each will; or that the copyright in this particular case had not been assigned to someone else. How on earth would you prove that? It would be totally impossible. For things that were never designed to be commercial, the concept of trying to trace the person who owns the copyright is ridiculous and is just a non-starter.
A clampdown will mean that a whole raft of things will not be able to be published by people in public office, because one cannot say to a public servant, “Just break the law because nobody is going to sue you”. You are telling them to act illegally. You can possibly do that as a private person and say, “They are not going to dare to sue me”, but you cannot expect people in libraries, universities, other such public bodies and charities to break the law. It is the wrong way to treat the law. As a result, we need something more sensible. That is why this entire clause is there, to try to solve the problem. But think of the millions of pounds involved if we charge even one penny per potential orphan work. We heard the figures a moment ago from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. I do not believe that there should be a presumption of an upfront payment unless it is a small administrative charge. There should be no payment that tries to reflect the number of orphan works that might be involved, particularly if it involves lots of little individual things going from A to Z.
I am also worried about what happens to the money. If it goes into general taxation, I am not sure that is a very good use of it. I tend to think that the great institutions probably know how to spend the money better than central government, but maybe I should not say that. I certainly feel that most taxpayers think that they know how to spend their money better, so for this to be a covert tax is not a good idea. I also find the concept of government departments taxing and fining each other absolutely ridiculous, as it just circulates money around.
I would disagree with the noble Lord only about the copyright on digital photographs. If, because there is a technical challenge with some people stripping out metadata, exclusions are made for one class of item, exceptions and exemptions will be created because there are many ways around it. What happens if you take what is an analogue photograph and digitise it? At that point, it is going out there digitally. Is it now digitised so that the copyright rule does not therefore apply to it, or whatever? We should keep it simple and include everything within the orphan works scheme. Apart from that, very soon there will not to be many photographs that are not digital, so by excluding them the law will take some time to catch up. In any event, this amendment is sensible and it would be madness to refuse it. Please will the Minister look on it kindly?
Lord Howie of Troon
My Lords, I want to make a very brief observation with regard to orphan works. The existing definition of an orphan work is not terribly satisfactory. The matter came before the previous Government in their last weeks—I see my noble friend Lord Young nodding over there—when I was successful in persuading them to accept a new definition of what an orphan work actually was, so that people would be in no confusion as to what they were dealing with. Unfortunately, this was the declining days of that Government and that part of the legislation disappeared in the wash-up. I wonder whether the Minister might look back to the Hansard of that period for the redefinition of orphan works and, perhaps at a later stage of this Bill, bring it back in.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I support this amendment. As I understand it, there has been a presumption in some way that the Unfair Contract Terms Act applies only to dealings between business and the consumer. Of course, there are in the field of copyright—indeed, I suspect in many aspects of intellectual property—areas where there is a substantial imbalance between the negotiating power of the intellectual property owner and the prospective licensee.
I understand that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been impressed by this argument. I have been told that there are discussions currently going ahead with my noble friend’s department to see if there is some way in which this imbalance could perhaps be recognised in the law. It might well not be possible to do it in this Bill, and on that I wait to hear my noble friend’s argument. I would like to be assured that the discussions going on within government—I understand this may be between the two departments—will continue so that there can be a proper examination of whether this extension can be made in some way. There is no doubt about it; someone has to deal with what at the moment looks, to many of the people in the creative industries, like a very unfair balance. It is part of the duty of government to see that that is put right. I hope my noble friend will be able to give us that assurance.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, we need to move somewhere in this direction, so I support this amendment. The unfairness of copyright law recently came home to me. Someone wanted to publish a book involving some of my ancestors, and asked whether they could use some material that I had at home. I replied, “Certainly, I would be delighted”. Then they said, “We need a release document”. They put a contract in front of me that said that they would have total rights to this material throughout the universe, known and unknown, in media not yet developed, incorporated and not incorporated—this, that and the other. The only thing it did not include was parallel universes. The contract said that I would have to defend the copyright whenever and wherever required, at my cost. I was not receiving anything for this; I was simply trying to be kind and helpful to someone who was making a documentary. I asked someone legal about it who said, “Oh, they probably couldn’t enforce it because it’s an unfair contract”, but apparently it is not because unfair contracts do not apply to copyright. I therefore asked whether other people had signed this, and was told, “Oh yes, they’ve signed them. Don’t worry, I’m sure nothing will happen”.
It is madness for people to sign these things. Something will come home to roost. You have only to look at the chancel repair bills that some people receive as a result of things signed long ago, which come home to roost generations later. This copyright thing would, if I had signed it, presumably have burnt my heirs and successors as well for the period of that copyright. This is potentially quite serious—something that people are ignoring. They think that it will go away and that it does not matter because it is so over the top. I struck through all the relevant clauses in the contract and said, “Right, you can have whatever rights you want to it, but you defend it and look after it”. I never heard any more and they never used the material, which is sad.
This is all part of the previous discussion on orphan works and extended collective licensing. So much is locked up that could help the future, help current understanding of the past and help to disseminate things, yet the big rights holders are so bullying in holding on to this material that they are preventing its dissemination. We have to open up and start being more reasonable, particularly in the digital age. On this amendment, therefore, I definitely support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I start by answering a question that my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones raised at the beginning. Well, it was more of a point, really. He said that he had sent a paper to me on how the issue of unfair contracts could be addressed. I confirm at the beginning that I have received this paper and that we will consider his suggestions very carefully. It is a little early to talk about this as a formal review, but I reassure him that we will certainly discuss this and take it forward.
However, I thank my noble friends for this amendment. I understand that individual creators can be at a disadvantage when negotiating contracts with intermediaries and large organisations. However, I believe that amending the Unfair Contract Terms Act in this way, as intended by this amendment, would not address these concerns. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones is aware that we have had discussions on this outside the Chamber. This is because the provisions of this part of the Act are limited in scope. Section 3 applies only where one of the parties is a consumer, or is on the other party’s non-negotiated standard terms of business. However, we should also consider the overarching point. Successive Governments have maintained the principle that businesses should be able to contract freely with each other, and that the Government should not unduly fetter or circumscribe this freedom.
My noble friends have raised valid concerns about individual creators. Although I do not consider that the Bill needs amendment in this respect, I would be happy to meet creators to explore these issues further. I hope that in the light of what I have said, my noble friends will not press their amendments.
The Earl of Erroll
Will the Minister clarify something? It sounded as though this amendment would cover the situation in which I found myself. If a creator is a sole trader, will he be covered as a business to consumer rather than business to business? Would that help?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The noble Earl raises an interesting point. This is very much a technical issue. As noble Lords will be able to imagine, a number of lawyers were involved before I was able to stand at the Dispatch Box today. On that point, I ask the noble Earl to allow me to get back to him with a specific reply.