Intellectual Property

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Good morning, Mr Caton. I welcome you to the Chair and the Minister to his place. I know that hasty rearrangements have been made to allow him to plug a few gaps this morning. I am grateful to you and the Minister for coming along, and I hope that our little chit-chat about intellectual property will be intellectually stimulating. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I thought that it would be interesting and opportune to examine intellectual property issues and economic growth, because there is so much stuff going on. It has been several months since publication of the Hargreaves review, which made several recommendations, and the Government’s response. In the past few weeks, the Intellectual Property Office has embarked on consultation on how those recommendations can be implemented, as well as doing us the favour of introducing a few new recommendations of its own, which I will touch on. Also in the past few weeks, the Government have appointed Richard Hooper to lead the new digital copyright exchange. He is consulting on the best way to take the new body forward, and I want to encourage as many people as possible to give evidence to both consultations to ensure that we get both issues right as far as possible.

We are getting into the awards season when the cream of the intellectual property-supported industry and artists will be celebrating at events such as the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards and the BRITs. I have a ticket for the BRIT awards ceremony. I do not know whether you have, Mr Caton, but I would be happy to tell you about it the following morning. I know that some of my colleagues here today are looking forward to that great event.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman being rather remiss in not mentioning the BBC Radio 2 folk awards, which take place this week, and which both he and I will be attending together in Salford?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. I must ensure that I book accommodation for my trip to Salford, which I am looking forward to.

It is worth reminding the Chamber of the contribution that the intellectual property-supported industry makes to the general economy. It is massive. Around 8% of our gross domestic product is predicated on the intellectual property-supported industry, and it is responsible for around 2.8 million jobs. As the hon. Gentleman’s intervention cleverly but not discreetly emphasised, my major interest is music. As well as the fantastic folk awards, the BRIT awards will take place in the next couple of weeks, when we will celebrate again that, outwith the United States, the United Kingdom is the second largest exporter of music worldwide. It is a huge, successful and fantastic industry, which has gone from strength to strength. Last year, we saw incredible success for UK artists, particularly in the US market.

Not just music is involved; every part of the creative range and everything that we do in this country produces a fantastic conveyor belt of imagination and talent, and we have been able to ensure that it has been successful. We have been able to do that mainly because we have fantastic imagination, talent and creativity within the UK. Moreover, we have built up a world-class infrastructure—the sector or the industry—that has been able to ensure that emerging talent has been identified, supported and mentored. We have ensured that that talent has been able to come through, and that is predicated on the real and important issue that those who have been prepared to invest in their talent have been rewarded for their contribution in bringing that talent through.

We must do nothing to threaten that incredible conveyor belt of talent, support and nurturing. However, we are beginning to observe a few danger signs. There are a few clouds on the horizon that are worth examining, because the threat comes from an unusual place. That threat and the clouds in the distance are being brought forward by the Government in the drift of some of their thinking and some of their policies. We must ensure that the industry continues to be supported. I have spoken in such debates for 10 years. I think that I have managed to speak in all debates on intellectual property and creative industries. I have never known a time when those who speak on behalf of the sector and all the different disciplines in the creative economy have felt that they have been undervalued and misunderstood and that their voice is not being heard.

There is a feeling in the sector of being under siege because of the tone and drift of the Government’s thinking about how we look at our creative economy. There is an emerging view that the Government might even be devaluing our whole attitude towards intellectual property. There is a sneaking suspicion—I have heard this from people throughout Europe—that the Government might be approaching something that could be described as anti-copyright. That is not a good place to be. It is not where we want to be if we want to grow this remarkable sector. The Government must hand out an olive branch to those who speak on behalf of the industry and the sector and try to get some of the issues resolved now.

There is also a feeling that that is happening because of the work of the Intellectual Property Office. Its very name suggests that it is about enabling and supporting intellectual property. One would think that that is what it is for, and that that would be its sole and exclusive responsibility. Some of the new thinking about devaluing intellectual property, and the drift and concern about copyright seem to come from within the IPO. We must be wary of that, because we might be creating an office that is supposed to support a particular sector, but instead is becoming a bureaucratic front to devalue the people whom it is supposed to support. We must get to grips with that.

The emerging view is that the Government are more interested in pursuing the rights of those who live off the content of others, and who perhaps abuse it, rather than those who produce it in the first place. That view contends that the artist, the creator and those who are prepared to invest in a talent have become a massive inconvenience and that they are an afterthought and must be grudgingly accommodated and managed. The idea that the inventor or creator is the owner of important intellectual property rights is barely recognised. Whatever links they want to assert must be collectivised for the greater good.

I appeal to the Government to get a grip on the issue, to take charge of it and to prevent the drift because it is not helpful. They must exercise and demonstrate effective political control. They have allowed us to drift over the past few years, and there has not been the leadership that this important sector—8% of GDP—requires. We have a haphazard arrangement, which is not in the interest of the whole sector. The IPO resides in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The creative industries, the artists and the inventors are managed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

We have a Minister who is not accountable to the elected House of Commons; she is a member of the House of Lords. This is my second debate on intellectual property and these issues. I gave evidence to the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, but I have not even had a meeting with that Minister, such is her accountability to elected Members of Parliament. I respectfully suggest how to resolve the matter. We need one dedicated Minister of State in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, where we could have the IPO and the artists, creators and the whole sector. Putting the IPO within that Department might lead to better understanding and more sympathy for the people whom it is nominally and notionally there to serve. A Minister of State who oversees the whole digital economy could pick up issues such as intellectual property, supporting artists and major legislation such as the Digital Economy Act 2010.

What we have now is totally unsatisfactory. There is no effective political control, and no leadership is given to the IPO, so it has started to develop its own agenda and come up with the notion that copyright and intellectual property must be constrained for the benefit of users. Close attention at ministerial level has not been paid to such issues over the past few years, and that has created a vacuum that has been occupied—possibly rightly—by the IPO, which has come on board and decided that such matters are its concern. The Minister is relatively new to these issues, but I urge him to get a grip and take control. Government agencies advise; Ministers decide. The Intellectual Property Office may sound like a grand organisation, but it is an instrument of government and should be subject to ministerial control and guidance.

When industries supported by intellectual property rights and those who speak for the sector come to Whitehall to put their case to Ministers, they are dismissed almost arrogantly. Their evidence, which at times the Government have charged them to produce, is dismissed as what Ian Hargreaves called “lobbynomics.” What a ridiculous thing to say to an industry and sector that try to produce work on behalf of the Government so that it is better understood. People are also told, in a patronising and sneering manner, that they do not understand the business environment in which they are working.

Those who now have the Government’s ear are not particularly helpful. Some have become self-serving protectionists and are telling the Government their views. Self-appointed digital rights champions seem to rule the roost when informing Government opinion, and everything that the Government do is predicated on the support for and desire to please massive multi-billion dollar west-coast United States companies such as Google.

I do not know why Google has the Government’s ear, but I do not contend that it has a particular lobbying influence inside No. 10. I do not even suggest that Steve Hilton, the special policy adviser, has a special relationship with Google. I do not suggest such things or contend them today. For some reason, however, Google has the ear of the Government, and it was no surprise that, when Ian Hargreaves initiated his review, many people called it the Google review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he had a lot to say, and he said it eloquently and concisely. He is right, although unfortunately I do not have much time to discuss orphan works. He will know, however, about the great concern that exists. It is an issue that emerged in the Hargreaves report and seemed sensible and the right thing to do, although as soon as we started to unravel some of its complexities, we noticed difficulties such as the one that he described. He will also know about the great unhappiness about orphan works that currently exists, especially among photographers. The Government must consider such issues seriously, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing the matter to the attention of the House.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is the hon. Gentleman disappointed at the attitude taken by Consumer Focus on such issues? It is a Government-funded organisation that exists to defend the consumer, although it seems more interested in defending things such as illegal downloading than in genuinely protecting consumers and dealing with rip-offs.

[Pete Wishart]

Once again, the hon. Gentleman is spot on. I saw the report by Consumer Focus, and disappointing is hardly the word that I would use to describe it. We are talking about illegal activity, which is what happens when people pirate the work of others and try to give it away for nothing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eric Joyce]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but in debates about intellectual property and copyright, as we have seen today—with one exception, on the matter of parody—the traffic all goes one way. It is quite easy to understand the importance of copyright, intellectual property and the creative industries. Conversely, it is easy to label people who copy things without paying for them as pirates and say they are committing illegal acts. However, without lauding that, it is a fact that the internet is a fantastic copying machine, and that is what happens. If we want to criminalise everyone who does it, we are on a hiding to nothing. We are criminalising everyone’s children to start with.

People sometimes say, “It’s exactly the same as theft. People download a record track and don’t pay for it. That is money that the industry forgoes.” That is a highly debatable and questionable proposition. Frequently, people want their stuff to be spread around the place and be copied, because it encourages other revenue streams.

[Kevin Brennan]

Of course my hon. Friend makes a valid point about criminalising everyone’s children, but is not the issue that powerful business interests effectively direct those who are searching for something on the internet to illegal sites that do not just copy the odd thing, but are factories for ripping off people’s intellectual property rights; and that if companies such as Google were more responsible and had some corporate social responsibility they would not be directing people, effectively, to the illegal end of the market?

[Eric Joyce]

Again, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Let us consider the propositions that Google polices the entire internet or the realm that it can police, and that internet service providers make their own judgments about what they should close, and let us imagine that they close down domains and that people cannot access all sorts of things out there on the basis of judgments made by commercial entities. There is a trend in the governance of the internet by some countries to want heavily to regulate its use. Looking across the world, such Governments tend to be those who are not particularly democratic. In democratic states, the trend is to say that the internet should have a degree of laissez-faire and, as Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn said—in many ways, they instigated the internet back in the ’60s and ’70s—it should be impartial as to its use and there should be no state governance.

That is the general assumption in theory in western and democratic states. However, we have heard the recent comments by the EU Justice Commissioner on the data protection directive on the right to be forgotten—that people should be able to take down accurate, legitimate data if they do not like having them up there and that they should be able to scrub out bits of history. Commercial interests want ISPs to police the internet and to take stuff down based on their commercial judgments, or that some Government-led body should make judgments about what is on the internet. The general trend is to have a high degree of directorial control by Governments over the internet and that sometimes extends to such corporate arguments.

[Kevin Brennan]

With your permission, Mr Caton, I have just googled “Empire State of Mind” by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z, and the first five results offered a free download of that track on Google. Why does a Google search not direct people to a legal site where they could purchase the track?

[Eric Joyce]

That is exactly the point I am making about censorship of the internet. The problem is that that is the way it is. In due course, industries will have to adapt to that way. The fact is that things will continue to be copied and industries with current business models will have to adjust. Of course, we have to do what we can within the realms of possibility to protect those industries but, inevitably, there will be a degree of evolution. Each time we have such a debate, the overwhelmingly dominant argument is for the protection of current business models, but people in those industries must know that things have to change.

Things will continue to be copied, and I would not advocate the degree of censorship of the internet that my hon. Friend seems to do. Essentially, it is straightforward for mirror sites to pop up, and it is virtually impossible to close down a site and prevent another one opening up to sell the same stuff. Yesterday, I thought that it would be quite interesting to set up an experiment with a page, with some people trying to keep the page alive and with the ISPs trying to close it down. I absolutely guarantee that those trying to keep that page up somewhere on the internet—it would inevitably appear in a Google search—would always win the day. The ISPs can close a site, but they cannot prevent the existence of the ideas in the site.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way once again. May I clarify that I am not advocating censorship, as he put it, of the internet? I am simply saying that the corporate social responsibility of a large corporation would surely require it to ensure that its algorithms and systems generate a search that directs people to legal sites. Such corporations are perfectly capable of doing that, even if illegal searches appear way down in the list of pages. The fact that those sites are listed at the top—often in the paid advertising part of a Google search, so contributing to Google’s profitability—does not show corporate social responsibility.

[Eric Joyce]

I am not sure that my hon. Friend is right about paid advertisements for illegal sites. I entirely understand the frustration at the Google algorithm producing sites that have unlawful content—we are talking about unlawful rather than legal content—but he is advocating censorship of the internet. Google would have to censor hundreds of thousands or millions of sites out there.

I am currently on the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions. It is interesting that its members are sometimes tempted to say, “Hang on, we could censor that, because that is done in China or because Twitter now has a new business model so that it can constrain certain types of tweets—especially those with references to religion or politics—for regimes in certain parts of the world.” It is true that Twitter could do that and that Google could constrain what is said on the internet, but we have to look at the flipside and ask whether that is particularly healthy in a democratic society.