Lord Young of Norwood Green
Main Page: Lord Young of Norwood Green (Labour - Life peer)Intellectual Property Bill [HL]
Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts“Director General of Intellectual Property Rights
(1) The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) In Part VII (miscellaneous and general) at the beginning insert the following new section—
“ Director General of Intellectual Property Rights
(1) The Secretary of State shall appoint an officer to be known as the Director General of Intellectual Property Rights (“the Director General”).
(2) The Director General has a duty to—
(a) promote the creation of new intellectual property,(b) protect and promote the interests of UK intellectual property rights holders,(c) co-ordinate effective enforcement of UK intellectual property rights, and(d) educate consumers on the nature and value of intellectual property.(3) In performing those duties, the Director General must also have regard to the desirability of—
(a) promoting the importance of intellectual property in the UK,(b) encouraging investment and innovation in new UK intellectual property, and(c) protecting intellectual property against infringement of rights.””
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords will recall that on 29 October last, the All-Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group produced a report, The Role of Government in Promoting and Protecting Intellectual Property, which urged the Government to get a grip on how IP policy is made. The chair, John Whittingdale MP, said in a press release:
“The current system of creating intellectual property policy just isn’t working. IP needs a champion within Government, who will recognise its significance and who will have the influence to co-ordinate policy across different departments. From trademarks to patents, design rights and copyright, UK companies depend on their IP rights to succeed and thrive. In this difficult economic climate it’s especially important that Government backs British businesses on IP. We hope that Government will take note of our proposals”.
In Committee on the ERR Bill, a number of noble Lords called for the creation of a new post of director-general of intellectual property rights, who would have a duty to promote the creation of IP and to protect it where it exists. We have retabled—with permission—the original amendment, which states:
“The Director General has a duty to … promote the creation of new intellectual property … protect and promote the interests of UK intellectual property rights holders … co-ordinate effective enforcement of UK intellectual property rights, and … educate consumers on the nature and value of intellectual property”.
The problem with the present situation, in which we have a Minister—the noble Viscount—and an executive agency, the IPO, is that the IPO may be an efficient registration body for the registration of IP rights but is not, and has never purported to be, a champion of IP. On the contrary, it sees its role as the passive one of holding the balance between creators and users. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said when he proposed the original amendment, the creators and owners of IP must have someone in government to speak up for them. That was what the amendment was intended to establish.
When he spoke in the original debate, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, commented that he had had a lot of support for the proposal from around the industry. He quoted the BPI, which argued that the director-general should be accountable for ensuring a framework for IP that would promote investment in new content, protect the investment from theft and counterfeit, and educate consumers on the importance of UK intellectual property to jobs, growth and the export strength of the United Kingdom.
Intellectual property across copyright, trade marks, design rights and patents is at the heart of the success of a modern knowledge-based economy. It is not sufficient to have one department, one Minister and one executive agency to try to do it all. There should be Ministers and expertise embedded right across Whitehall. If you add in the need to educate people about IP and how it works, the case for a DG in this area seems very strong indeed.
The UK is a world leader in intellectual property. We all agree that how the Government develop IP policy is vital for our economy. The Government should match this ambition and champion IP as much as possible. The IPO cannot remain a passive registrar of IP. It clearly needs to be more overtly a champion for IP. The United States has obviously benefited from having an IP tsar, otherwise known as the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, who is responsible for national strategy and reports directly to the White House. We offered a similar title to the Minister in an earlier debate, but he seemed unwilling to put on the robes or adopt the persona. I did not think that he looked like Ivan the Terrible; Peter the Great had a more constructive role, both literally and metaphorically, given Saint Petersburg, if I recall. I am sure that the Minister knows that such wonderful casting opportunities do not come too often. This is the second time I have asked him.
Having said that, creating a director-general of intellectual property rights to sit within the Intellectual Property Office and serve as a champion of IP rights within and across government would increase the influence of the Intellectual Property Office across government and also strengthen the hand of the Minister responsible for IP. As the Alliance for Intellectual Property says:
“We believe such a post is needed to ensure that this success is properly recognised, celebrated and built upon to ensure its contribution to growth, employment, culture and society is properly maximised; for IP to be championed in a way it is in other nations”.
I beg to move.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, as someone involved in the All-Party Parliamentary IP Group report of last year, which the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned, it would be churlish of me not to take part briefly in this debate. The white horse which I see the noble Lord now sitting on had a pretty good trot during the passage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. I do not really wish to reopen the issue with a semi-Second Reading debate on the role of the Minister and the idea of an IP tsar.
It has been quite interesting over the past six months, and is really important, that the Government and the IPO have demonstrated that they have intellectual property holders’ concerns at heart. We are of course in Committee but, in the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, talked about achieving a balance. Here the noble Lord, Lord Young, is talking about unequivocally championing IP. I am very much at the end of the spectrum: although, as the Minister picked up, I am very keen on having an evidence base, I am still an unequivocal champion of IP so I found what he had to say very attractive.
The issue for me is not so much structures as attitude, increasingly. “By their fruits shall ye know them” is the key to all this. Are the Government going to implement the Digital Economy Act? Are they going to limit the exceptions to those that are really needed in the fields in which they are being introduced? Will they produce the right kind of report about innovation, growth and intellectual property? What is their approach to protecting intellectual property rights in broad terms? A lot of it is about attitudes rather than structures.
Many of us would love to see an IP Minister with the same hat as the Creative Industries Minister. Given that that is a cross-departmental matter, I suspect that it is never going to happen but I believe that the connection between intellectual property and the creative industries is extremely important and should be represented in a single-focus Minister. That would be a great step forward.
I have met the very impressive United States intellectual property tsar, Victoria Espinel, who has a valuable role in the American Administration. However, I am not sure that an intellectual property tsar would play quite such a valuable role in the UK system. I say that despite the fact that I signed up to the relevant amendment but, hell, we can always change our positions. The more the Minister keeps doing what he is doing, the less we will see the need for not an inspector-general but a director-general of intellectual property. However, he probably still has some way to go to convince us that the Government and the IPO really have the interests of the creators of intellectual property at heart.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, Amendment 28AA would create a new statutory role of “Director General of Intellectual Property Rights”, with a duty to promote intellectual property rights. A very similar amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill was proposed by my noble friends Lord Jenkin, Lord Clement-Jones and Lady Buscombe, who is not in her place today.
The functions of this new role are already being carried out. As Minister for Intellectual Property, I have a role to champion the IP system as a whole. That includes the vital role of not only protecting the interests of IP rights owners but considering the different interests of future businesses, consumers and other users and creators of IP. A balanced IP system promotes strong and competitive markets, and encourages innovation and creativity.
My role as IP Minister is to create and sustain the best possible balance. I am supported in this role by the IPO, whose objectives I set through its annual corporate plan. The IPO is responsible for promoting innovation by providing a clear, accessible and widely understood IP system that enables the economy and society to benefit from knowledge and ideas.
In particular, I am supported by the chief executive of the Intellectual Property Office, who is a director-general within the Civil Service. The chief executive is appointed by the Secretary of State. He or she is directly accountable to the Secretary of State, to me as the responsible Minister and to the Permanent Secretary as the principal accounting officer. The chief executive is responsible for the administration of the relevant statutes, in this case the Patents Act 1977, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Trade Marks Act 1994 and associated legislation. He or she also advises the Secretary of State on all aspects of national intellectual property, related EU and international legislation and on relevant policy issues. It seems to me that these are precisely the tasks that one would expect a director-general of IP to perform, and we have a director-general doing them.
We have heard the suggestion that a director-general for IP owners is needed to convince holders of IP rights that the Government are supportive of their interests. The Government have already introduced or supported a wide range of beneficial measures, from enhanced R&D tax credits and incentives for animation to longer copyright for music performances, and from easier access to justice through the courts to encouraging a new IP crime unit in the City of London Police to tackle online IP crime. It is clear that we have done much for IP-intensive industries, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones acknowledged in the Grand Committee on the ERR Bill. I appreciate his general support today—when compared, perhaps, with his views during the passage of the ERR Bill—and I am grateful.
The need for balance in IP policy has been recognised for many years. For example, when the current Copyright, Designs and Patents Bill was debated in the other place in 1988, the former honourable Member for Sedgefield, Tony Blair, said the following:
“The difficult balance that we have to strike … is between ensuring that industry has a proper incentive to invest and recognising that the consumer must be protected against the lack of competition that will inevitably come from copyright protection. If we protect industry too much the consumer will suffer through the abuse of monopoly, and if we give too little protection to industry it will lose the incentive to invest. Our task is not to choose between the interests of industry and the consumer but adequately to balance those interests”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/7/88; col. 38.]
I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for clarifying that point earlier in this debate.
The duties of the proposed director-general are significant in what they do not include. There is no duty to consider the impact on consumers, other businesses or the advance of research. He or she need not have regard to the benefits of competition, and the development of high-quality evidence does not appear to have been given priority. These are not optional extras but important considerations in their own right. Although the Government understand the intention behind the amendment, we do not believe that this additional role is necessary. In addition, I am not fully convinced that a role that does not acknowledge the balance of interests necessary to good intellectual property policy would benefit creators, rights owners or the UK.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, raised some important points, some of which I may have addressed earlier. He suggested that the IPO is efficient at registering but does not champion IP rights. As I mentioned earlier, the Intellectual Property Office is under my control as Minister for IP. I do not know about my transition from Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great but reiterate that I am a proud Intellectual Property Minister. However, importantly, I do not agree that it is my role to champion current IP rights holders over future ones or to have one set over another.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, questioned what the IPO has done to support rights holders and IP businesses. As I mentioned earlier, the IPO is taking a wide range of actions to help business. I refer noble Lords to my lengthy letter last week, which set out some of these activities on business support and enforcement. I have here—which I can wave, Chamberlain-style—a copy of the IPO achievements for 2012-13. Noble Lords are most welcome to read it.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked if intellectual property should be embedded in considerations across departments in Whitehall. Having the IPO as the centre of IP expertise and policy in government, to which departments can turn, helps to facilitate this. Furthermore, IPO policy officials actively reach out to other departments—DCMS and the Ministry of Justice, to name but two—on cross-cutting intellectual property issues. This system works for a wide range of policy areas and is the norm.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones said that the Government and the IPO must show that they have the interests of intellectual property holders at heart. He is right. The Government have done much, including extending the copyright term in music performances and the tax incentives for research and development in animation, which I mentioned earlier.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that the Government should not be championing intellectual property rights to the detriment of others; in other words, he was focusing on the public interest balance. Again, this is absolutely right. The IPO acts in the public interest, running the IP system in order to maximise innovation and creativity in the widest possible sense.
I hope that on the basis of the information I have provided, specifying in some depth the role of the chief executive of the IPO, as well as my own passion for the role as IP Minister, the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I have not quite struck a consensus in Committee on this occasion. Even those who were supportive before seem to have decided that the ship was going down. Nevertheless, it has been a useful debate.
Of course, I concur with the critics, such as my noble friend Lord Howarth, who talked about the importance of getting the balance right between IP rights and public interest. I would not demur from that and I would not say that this is a perfect amendment. However, if nothing else, it has again required the Minister to define the way that, as the IP Minister, he acts within his department and with other departments. In that respect, it has been useful. It was unfortunate that he referred to Chamberlain, as his career was terminated rather abruptly, so perhaps he should choose another analogy in future when he is waving a piece of paper. Nevertheless, I take the point that he made.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, was right to say that we will judge the Government by their actions. The reference to the Digital Economy Act brought a feeling of nostalgia and I hope that we will see it fully enacted. Nevertheless, I thank noble Lords for participating in the debate and, taking into account those responses, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Compensation for financial loss
(1) Section 97 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) At the end of subsection (2), insert “including in addition to or as an alternative to compensating the plaintiff for financial loss a lump sum equivalent to the amount of royalties or fees which would have been due had authorisation to use the relevant rights been requested”.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, we have argued in Committee about whether or not criminal sanctions should be introduced to the design rights field. However, even if the Government’s current proposal is adopted, unregistered design rights will remain outside the criminal courts.
It has been argued that the present civil damages regime is ineffective and provides no deterrent to those seeking to infringe IP rights—infringements which, it can be argued, impact on economic growth. The current regime offers little opportunity for organisations to claim back the true costs of the losses they suffer, apart from the often nominal unpaid licence fee, as it takes no account of the profits a person may have made on the back of their infringement. Therefore, given that the only penalty available is an ability to reclaim the fee that should have been paid in the first place, a situation is created that provides an incentive to infringe.
The Gowers report of 2006 stated that:
“Damage awards should act as a disincentive to infringement”.
The 2007 Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report into new media and the creative industries stated:
“The deterrent effect of the present law in this respect is near zero: it should be substantial, as are some of the illicit profits being made”.
The 1997 Law Commission report, Aggravated, Exemplary and Restitutionary Damages, stated:
“Substantial numbers of consultees considered that exemplary damages do or could have a useful role to play in filling these gaps. They fulfil a practical need. We agree”.
When pressed, the Ministry of Justice points to the fact that the civil regime is there only to compensate, while the criminal regime is there to punish. However, blurring of these boundaries already takes place. In January 2010, a judge awarded exemplary damages in a civil case involving a car insurance scam. In addition to ordering the individuals in the fraud ring to compensate the companies for £300,000 of losses, the judge ordered the ring to pay a further £92,000 as a punishment. The reason, he stated, was to send a clear message that this sort of action would not be tolerated.
The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights—TRIPS—requires that members provide enforcement procedures that “permit effective action” against infringement of intellectual property rights covered by the agreement, including,
“remedies which constitute a deterrent to further infringements”.
The EU directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights echoes the TRIPS obligation. To satisfy the obligations imposed by TRIPS and EU law, many EU member states have adopted strong rules on civil damages for intellectual property infringements; for example, in Ireland aggravated and exemplary damages are available. In other markets, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland and Romania, rights holders can recover multiple damages. Lithuania provides for a form of statutory damages. These remedies are not available in the UK. In addition, Canada, the US and other countries have introduced statutory or pre-established damages.
Can the Minister say whether the UK Government believe that their implementation of the enforcement directive meets the requirement for member states to have “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” civil remedies? It is true that the courts are free to continue to apply their existing approach. A subsequent licence purchase, for example, may be deemed adequate to compensate for lost profits. Technically, this leaves the rights holder with the ability to recover unfair profits by suing the infringer. However, proving such profits can be exceedingly difficult in many cases, especially where the profit is a saved cost.
Much, if not all, of the substantive and common law that concerns the awarding of damages predates the development of the modern, digital-based creative economy. As a result, anomalies, deficiencies and inequities have become increasingly apparent, particularly for copyright interests. The amendment provides the ideal opportunity for these problems to be fixed. I beg to move.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I was not planning to speak on the amendment but the noble Lord, Lord Young, made such a good fist of the arguments that I wanted to say that this matter needs serious examination. In fact, when one looks closely, one sees that this is a relatively mild amendment because it does not really constitute exemplary damages. It simply rolls up royalties into a lump sum that otherwise could have been awarded by a court. Exemplary damages are rather tougher. Indeed, many rights holders complain that the provisions of the amendment would be inadequate when all they are going to get is just the equivalent of a royalty when, in fact, an infringement has taken place over a long period. One could go a lot further, but as a first step and as a way of stimulating discussion this is an interesting amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for participating in the debate. I cannot say that we found the Minister’s answer totally satisfactory. We will reflect on the statistics that he gave us. I assume, as he only went as far as 2009, that we have not got any further statistics for 2009 to 2012. If he has, no doubt he will let us know in writing. We will reflect on his points and, in those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, very strongly indeed. I am very glad that he tabled this amendment. There is a palpable injustice that needs to be remedied and I can see no good reason why it has not already been done. It should be done very expeditiously indeed.
The historic authors’ public lending right scheme has always been run on a highly cost-effective basis. The cost of it has been minimal to public funds. But it has been valued very much by authors, not because it makes them rich—there is a low ceiling on the total remuneration they can receive through the scheme—but because it gives recognition to their copyright and their rights as authors. Rightly, they feel strongly about it. It is clear that the principles of the system need to be extended to e-books and should have been extended long ago to audiobooks. All the thinking has been done by Mr Sieghart and his colleagues.
To carry on with the present state of affairs is disreputable. I suspect that the constraint is seen as one of cost but even a token royalty or token remuneration would satisfy the principle, which I think is important to authors. I hope very much that the Minister, speaking on behalf of not only his department but the DCMS, will be able to encourage us today.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his comprehensive contribution, as well as my noble friend Lord Howarth. I think that they have covered the waterfront on this one. The only thing I would add is: can the IP Minister tell us what has happened to the Digital Economy Act? I look forward to his response. Basically, we support the premise that is contained in this amendment.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones for his amendment. This amendment and the following one fall within the remit of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. However, as I work ever more closely with my colleagues in DCMS where there is some crossover in policy, I am more than happy to discuss these amendments today.
The Government recognise the opportunities presented by the lending of e-books by public libraries and recently commissioned an independent review of e-lending in libraries in England, led by William Sieghart, which my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones referred to. Noble Lords will be aware of the public lending right—PLR—scheme which enables authors and other rights holders to receive payments in exchange for their works being loaned out free of charge by public libraries.
More than 23,000 authors, illustrators, photographers, translators and editors who have contributed to books lent out by public libraries in the UK receive PLR payments each year, up to a maximum of £6,600 per rights holder. This is, in effect, compensation for the mandatory nature of the PLR scheme. Rights holders are automatically included in the scheme, although some authors waive their right to receive PLR payments.
At present, e-books, audiobooks and e-audiobooks—which I shall collectively call e-books for convenience—are outside the scope of the PLR scheme. This is regardless of whether those books are downloaded on library premises or downloaded remotely, such as at home. It is very important to note that public libraries are able to lend e-books, both on library premises and remotely, without the PLR scheme being extended. Library authorities offering e-lending reach appropriate agreements to license the lending of e-books by contracting the services of third party aggregators who liaise with publishers on rights holders’ behalf.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I welcome that nugget of information but it is a nugget in that there is quite a lot more in the Digital Economy Act. I was taking the opportunity to ask generally and I quite understand that that requires a complex answer. If the Minister will write to us with more information, it will be eagerly received.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I was attempting to give a fuller answer in that I, too, understood that it was a slightly more complex question and that is why I would like to give a holistic answer covering the noble Lord’s general point about the timing and the rollout of the Digital Economy Act.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones asked why we should not just provide a token amount of remuneration in respect of PLR. By EU law, remuneration must be more than merely illusory. Although the UK has a degree of discretion as to the amount, the European Commission’s case law has said that it must be real and reflect the loss of remuneration, so the availability of funding is relevant to any extension. My noble friend also asked what the implications were if these changes were not made. To clarify that point, library authorities can continue to lend e-books without the extension of PLR.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked whether the issue is one of cost and, if so, whether a token amount can be paid. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones made a similar point. The financial implications must be given consideration but I assure noble Lords that the Culture Minister is giving this proper consideration even as the challenging economic circumstances continue. With this in mind, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Clement-Jones
Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that this is a rather shorter amendment. Amendment 31 inserts a new clause which will increase criminal penalties for digital copyright offences. Criminal offences for online copyright theft have maximum penalties of two years’ imprisonment. Criminal offences for physical copyright theft have maximum penalties of 10 years’ imprisonment. This discrepancy came about because the new offences were introduced by secondary legislation using the European Communities Act 1972 as part of the UK’s implementation of the copyright directive in 2003. Penalties for new criminal offences introduced by secondary legislation via the ECA are limited to two years’ imprisonment. This was also after my right honourable friend Vince Cable’s Private Member’s Bill that became the Copyright etc. Trade Mark (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002 and that increased penalties for criminal copyright offences to harmonise them with those available for trade mark offences at 10 years.
I strongly believe that criminal sanctions should not be dependent on whether the offence is taking place in an online or physical environment. Intellectual property is still being stolen, whichever format is being used. The problem that this has created for law enforcement was seen recently in FACT’s significant landmark private prosecution of Anton Vickerman. Vickerman was making £50,000 each month running a website which facilitated mass-scale copyright infringement. He was prosecuted and subsequently convicted on two counts of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. This sentence would not have been possible if he had been prosecuted under copyright law.
This amendment does not introduce any new offence. It is simply about addressing an anomaly in the level of penalties available. The maximum criminal penalties for IP offences are: trade mark, 10 years; physical copyright, 10 years; registered designs, 10 years proposed in the Bill; and online copyright, two years. The Government prosecutors are happier using fraud legislation to obtain convictions against online infringers. Given this, there is no appetite to amend the CDPA. Trade associations such as FACT and the BPI anti-piracy unit tell a different story. While they do use the Fraud Act in some instances, it would not be applicable to all cases and offences. Fraud legislation is used because, owing to this discrepancy, there is no other option. The Fraud Act is used as a work-around because of the leniency in the CDPA.
In the Vickerman case, had he not conspired with someone, conspiracy would not have been a possible charge, which would have left a serious offence subject to a disproportionately low maximum penalty. What law enforcement and prosecutors need is a full package of legislative options available to them so that they can consider each case individually and use the piece of legislation that will get them the best result. This discrepancy aids defendants. They are able to point to the fact that the maximum penalty for these offences is only two years, and therefore that they are minor offences and should not be viewed as serious. This is incredibly damaging. Modern copyright law should focus on having a content-neutral and platform-neutral approach to infringement. I beg to move.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, we support in principle the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and would be interested to hear the ministerial response.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I listened carefully to the speech of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. In so doing, I was multitasking and was able to calculate that my noble friend has pledged to dress himself up in no fewer than three layers of party clothes, which, I imagine, must be quite an impressive sight. Given that this is the last amendment that I will be speaking to in Committee, I want briefly to thank all Peers who have contributed and engaged in Committee on the Bill. I realise that there will be more to speak about on Report and I look forward to further discussions.
The effect of the amendment tabled by my noble friend would be to increase the maximum penalty for online copyright infringement to 10 years’ imprisonment. While I recognise that there appears to be a discrepancy between the penalties obtainable from the two offences of online copyright infringement, with a maximum of two years’ imprisonment, and physical copyright infringement, with a maximum of 10 years under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, I cannot support harmonisation of the two offences, given my understanding of the area.
Prosecutors are already using our current fraud legislation to obtain convictions for online infringement, with substantial penalties, up to a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment. The existing legislation allows for effective prosecutions to be made without reliance on any specialist intellectual property knowledge. Last year, for example, the owner of the website Surfthechannel—which linked to pirated copies of films and TV—was sentenced to four years in prison on two counts of conspiracy to defraud, more than the two years available under the CDPA.
The important economic aspect of this was addressed by the Digital Economy Act when it came into force in 2010. This raised financial penalties on digital offences to £50,000, in line with physical copyright theft. The Government have no evidence to support the suggestion that an increased sanction for online copyright infringement would either increase the number of prosecutions brought forward, increase the length of sentences passed down to those found guilty of infringement or deter more people from infringing. We have not consulted on this and we have no plans to do so.
With existing legislation already providing the necessary penalties and prosecutors having a range of options already at their disposal, at the present time I see no reason to increase sanctions under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, despite there being a slight discrepancy. In particular, changes should not be made without carrying out the appropriate consultation to gather evidence of the impact.
I hope that this has clarified the Government’s position to my noble friend, and I ask him to withdraw his amendment.