Copyright (Public Administration) Regulations 2014

Lord Scott of Foscote Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Lords Chamber

The Government have committed to promoting a modern, robust and flexible framework for copyright. These reforms are an important part of that. I commend the instruments to the House.

[Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)]

My Lords, I do not wish to oppose any of the three sets of regulations that the noble Viscount has recommended we approve. However, there are one or two aspects of the Government’s approach to copyright that I find a little worrying, and perhaps I may ventilate them with the Minister. They may arise particularly when the last two sets of regulations, which are not before the House at the moment, come to be considered.

It has to be borne in mind that copyright has been the subject of legislation for a long time. I cannot remember when the first Copyright Act was enacted, but it was enacted for the purpose of providing proper regulation of the protection that the producers of copyright works—artistic, musical, literary or whatever—were entitled to expect. Generally speaking, they were professionals earning their living from the works that they produced for those who were able to benefit from them. It became apparent that legislation was needed in this sphere and it has been thus ever since.

The Minister referred to a benefit that the current spate of regulations will produce of, I think, £250 million over 10 years. I was wondering out of whose pocket that would come. Does it mean that the proprietors of the copyrights will be subsidising the use of their work by receiving lower sums for that work, and for the copyright licences that they were granted, than they were previously receiving? If so, it is a sort of compulsory donation by the proprietors of the copyright works in question to the benefit of the country, which I am not sure has any precedent elsewhere. I began to think of the relevant law applying to patents. If an inventor produces a very valuable patent which the Government of the day wish to exploit for their own entirely proper purposes, the Government can apply to the courts and obtain a compulsory licence but they will not get it for nothing. The compulsory licence will have a term under which some remuneration for the use of the patent is paid to the proprietor of the patent—the inventor.

Here, we have amendments to the copyright regime that will apparently save a great deal of money, but, as I have asked already, at whose expense will that be? If it is just a saving in time for administrators, that is one thing, but if the copyright holders will receive less, that is entirely different. I wonder whether the patent analogy of a compulsory licence on appropriate terms that can be fixed by the court ought not to be preferred as the means of dealing with the problems that have been identified.

As I said, I do not object to any of the regulations. They are all for worthy purposes, but to the extent that their effect is to require copyright holders to be compulsory donators to, in some cases, charitable purposes and, in some, just general public purposes, I wonder whether it is fair to do so without providing for some compensatory element to recompense them for the loss to their pockets—which, according to the Minister, will be substantial—over the next 10 years.

These points are going to arise particularly when the last two sets of regulations—one relating to personal copies for private use and the other relating to copying for the purposes of quotation and parody—come to be considered. Nothing there could be described as remotely charitable or for the public benefit, which is a shield under which these three sets of regulations can all shelter. I think that the Minister needs to tell the House to what extent the savings that the Government anticipate from the five regulations taken as a block will fall upon the pockets of the copyright holders who have created these works of arts, pieces of music or literary masterpieces that enjoy copyright.

[Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)]

To follow up the point made by my noble and learned friend, perhaps I may briefly ask the Minister whether these welcome modifications to copyright law will in any way have an impact on or amend the procedures followed by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, which provides modest sums for authors if their works are subsequently copied through libraries or other mechanisms. Will they affect that procedure of the ALCS?