The Internet and Privacy

Mike Weatherley Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for initiating this debate. I should like to draw hon. Members’ attention to my declaration of interest. At heart, I am a libertarian. As a general rule, I abhor state interference. I believe in free markets and feel that Government tend to hinder rather than enhance enterprise and creativity. However, I will argue today that some Government interference and regulation are essential. I am certainly against any information being stored about me without specific consent. That seems obvious and the Government should quickly address the matter through regulation.

My contribution to this debate is to do with intellectual property, piracy, the balancing of civil liberties with individual freedoms, and the protection of copyright holders. In September, I attended a week-long forum organised by the UN on worldwide internet governance. To some hon. Members, that may not seem like a lively and riveting subject, and, to be honest, parts of it were a little dry. None the less, there was some very interesting information to take away. The attendees were from a wide background. They were internet technical specialists, civil servants, pressure groups and so on. Disappointingly, there were few Government Ministers or Members of Parliament from around the world, other than some from east Africa and six from the UK Parliament. The pirate party from Sweden was also represented. That latter inclusion gives a flavour of what the debates tended to centre on.

Many groups were quite rightly concerned about child protection issues. Other than that, however, there was a general feeling that the internet should be totally free and that any regulation should be resisted, especially Government-type controls. However, it is my belief that that is a recipe for disaster. The internet is all-powerful, with an increasing flow of digital information, be it written, musical, on video or pictorial. It is providing for a world economy that is both fast-reacting and, for some, increasingly obscure. Anomalies are already showing up, as we have heard. At the forum, we learned that India does not have a data protection Act, so data stored there are not under the same rules and regulations as they are here.

However, the biggest threat to commerce and innovation is where creative works can become “owned” by users of the internet, rather than those who are creating the works. As we know, file sharing has become rife. At the forum, the prevailing view was that music downloads cannot be stopped, so we should let people get on with it. That is simply nonsense. Certainly, business models need to change so that musicians can recover revenues in different ways, such as on live tours. However, if all creative works are suddenly to be public property, our creative industries are at risk.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is not simply that the internet, or search engines such as Google, are allowing free access to such work; as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) mentioned, they are a making a profit from such access, and are making money from aggregating other people’s content.

[Mike Weatherley]

Indeed, and to add to my hon. Friend’s point, the money that is being made is not finding its way to the owners of the creative works. Let me give a quick example from Spain, where there is a free-for-all internet culture. Various leading movie studios are actively considering banning DVD sales in that country. Sales of DVDs fell six times faster in Spain than in the rest of Europe. There were 2.4 billion unauthorised downloads of music and movies, which represents 50 downloads per Spaniard, which is just huge. Unfortunately, the UK is going in the same direction.

There must be reward for inventors and artists to enable those sectors to flourish. We cannot allow the UK music industry to be decimated. I have submitted some parliamentary written questions to discover just how important our overseas earnings from music are to our economy, and to find out how many jobs are involved. I do not need the reply to know that the figure is very high indeed.

The Digital Economy Act 2010, which has been referred to, has started to recognise the problem, and the Gowers report made a firm commitment to protecting copyright owners. However, favourable reports will not save the situation if there is not some control of the internet by a responsible governing body that looks out for the interests of creative individuals. The Digital Economy Act has flaws, and the appeals process is one such flaw. However, what the Act does is enshrine the right of individuals not to have their works stolen. I therefore commend my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for initiating this debate.

[Dr Huppert]

I suspect that we need to talk further about the interpretation of the Digital Economy Act 2010. I am glad that my hon. Friend accepts that it has flaws. Does he not accept that there is already provision in law for people not to have items stolen? There is a huge amount of legislation covering theft, fraud and all sorts of other issues, and my hon. Friend is in danger of saying, “We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.”

[Mike Weatherley]

I thank my hon. Friend for making his point. None the less, the view from the UN internet governance forum, which was attended by representatives from around the world, was that the internet cannot be controlled, and so everything should go free. We have heard today that that is simply unacceptable and that there is scope for legislation.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for initiating the debate, and urge all parliamentarians to get behind moves to ensure that our personal freedoms are not eroded by those taking advantage of this rapidly changing medium. They should support legislation and committees and call for proper regulation across the board. They may temper that regulation so that we have only what is necessary, because we do not want strangulation by regulation. It is a difficult line, but one that we must get right—and quickly.