Intellectual Property

Debate between Pete Wishart and Lord Foster of Bath

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart]

Again, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I can tell that he is passionate about the issues to do with orphan works, and he makes that point well. However, we must be careful about how we progress this agenda.

I want to touch on the exceptions that were not dealt with in the Hargreaves report. Some exceptions have just emerged as part of the IPO’s consultation and have caused immense concern, anxiety and grief. Those exceptions have to do with educational copying. This is a fundamental and very difficult issue. I am almost having to address this point to the IPO, because there is a sense that there is very little ministerial control when it comes to these things, but will the Minister please get in touch with these guys and get them to have a look at what they are doing with educational exceptions, because they are very dangerous? We could see no money whatever going to the people who provide educational materials, whether they are published works or programming—no money being collected on behalf of the people who produce that work for schools and other places of education. If there were to be no reward for people supplying that material to schools and colleges, why on earth would they do that? They will not do it for nothing. We are in real danger here. It is not only the authors and the people who make those programmes who will lose out. The schoolchildren and students will lose out, too, unless we resolve the issue, so will the Minister please examine that?

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

I apologise to you, Mr Caton, and to the other hon. Members, but as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) knows, I have to leave the Chamber in a few minutes. I am slightly disappointed that in an excellent speech, the hon. Gentleman has not made it absolutely clear what option 5 from the IPO with regard to educational exceptions means. It means in effect that an author could write a textbook, one copy could be printed and thereafter multiple copies could be made in schools throughout the land for children in those schools to use, with no reward going to the author and therefore not a cat in hell’s chance of that author ever bothering to write again.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is why I did not make that point. I just knew that he was bursting to make it on my behalf, and he made it so much better than I ever could have, so I am grateful to him.

Nowhere in the Hargreaves report is there a real economic impact assessment. No assessment is made of the threat to existing businesses and existing business models from the recommendations. I am conscious that I have been speaking for almost half an hour. I want other hon. Members to be able to speak, so I will just say a couple more things.

What are we doing about the Digital Economy Act 2010? When will the recommendations be implemented? We need to get a move on. I know that it is not this Minister’s responsibility; it is down to the DCMS. That goes back to the problem that I was trying to explain earlier of the responsibility being split being Departments. That is of no use or value whatever. However, we need now to address the Digital Economy Act. We need to implement the recommendations. I am sure that the Minister saw the fantastic report done by the film industry that said that we are losing out by not tackling piracy effectively. We have seen the example of France. We know that measures similar to those in the DEA work. France has been able to direct traffic towards legal downloading sites, and there has been a decrease in pirated works, so we know that that works. The UK is falling behind countries such as New Zealand, France and Italy. We need to get on with implementing the recommendations in relation to the DEA.

I know that there is still work to be done with regard to Ofcom’s assessment, but the Minister should be on the phone to Ofcom daily, saying, “What’s going on? Come on, Ofcom. Get a move on. Make sure you put this code of practice in place.” We are still in the appalling situation in which very powerful internet service providers are, through various court actions, thwarting and frustrating the implementation of the DEA recommendations. Let us get on and ensure that we fix that.

This is an important sector. We need to fix or resolve a number of things. We need effective political control. We need to ensure that the IPO is properly managed, with ministerial authority and control over what is going on. We should remember that there is no content without the creator, the artist or the inventor. If we predicate our whole approach to the digital economy on the idea that those who abuse or use that content are of more concern and interest to the Government than those who create it, we will be in serious trouble, and we will cause serious damage.

We are at a crossroads with some of the consultations I mentioned. We could still have world-class creative industries; we have the greatest creative sector in the world, and we export more content per head of population than any other nation, so let us do absolutely nothing that threatens that. I trust that the Minister will take these points away with him and ensure that we continue to do everything we can in the best interests of our creative industries and our creative sector.

Intellectual Property (Hargreaves Report)

Debate between Pete Wishart and Lord Foster of Bath

Thursday 7th July 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Chope, and hope that you find our little chit-chat about intellectual property intellectually stimulating. The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning is not a regular at our get-togethers about the creative industries and intellectual property, but we welcome him to the debate. I saw him in action yesterday. He was particularly robust in his response then, and I am sure that we will get a comprehensive response to the many issues that will come across his desk in the next few hours.

This debate gives me a sense of déjà vu and Groundhog day. I remember standing here, probably on this same spot, some five years ago responding to a Government-commissioned report and review into intellectual property, which was described as groundbreaking and eagerly anticipated, and as the panacea for all the difficulties and problems that we have with the intellectual property laws. That was the Treasury-commissioned Gowers review, and around the Chamber I can see other veterans who carry the scars of that review. Five years down the line, fewer than half of Gowers’ recommendations have been implemented.

Gowers, and now Hargreaves, follow a long, honourable and noble tradition of Government reviews and reports on intellectual property. Since Gowers, and before Hargreaves, there was the “Digital Britain” report and the Digital Economy Act 2010. In fact, 25 pieces of work on intellectual property or copyright laws have been commissioned from either Brussels or Whitehall, including Green Papers, White Papers, formal consultations, informal consultations and the inevitable round-table discussions. The Government have proven very efficient and effective in initiating such reports, reviews and commissions, but a little less so in implementing the many recommendations that have come across their desk. We wait to see whether Ian Hargreaves will be more successful with his recommendations, but I have a sense and a suspicion that once again, in a few years’ time, we will all be sitting around this table looking at another Government-sponsored review on intellectual property, which once again will have been eagerly anticipated and presented as some sort of panacea for the problems with our intellectual property laws.

My little bit of advice to the Government is that they expend a bit more energy on doing something with the creative industries and less on indulging in this continual and consistent review-itis. We need action from them to support our creative industries, to ensure that they continue to develop and grow. Perhaps the Government could consider some of the financial matters. Finance and funding are a critical factor, and small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are looking just now to the Government for assistance with that, so that they can develop. The Government should also help creative industries to deal with their online market, as that will help with the new digitalisation that is a massive challenge to so many of the industries, and the Government should do something about the corrosive online piracy that eats away at our creative industries, depriving them of profit, investment and growth. The Government can do more than continually and consistently have reviews, so let us get together and do something.

Of course, it is good to see that the Government take an interest in their intellectual property and copyright laws. So they should. Intellectual property and copyright are fundamental to the well-being of the UK economy, accounting for about 8% of our total gross domestic product. Some £65 billion was invested in intellectual property in the UK in 2010, and the creative industries alone account for 2.7 million jobs here. My particular interest is in music, and music—particularly exports—has been a massive success over the past few years. In the United States, in 2010 alone, 9.8% of all album sales were from UK artists. It looks like 2011 will be an equally bumper year, with one artist, Adele, practically owning the US charts just now, such is her phenomenal success. That has helped to maintain the UK’s position as the No. 2 exporter of music worldwide.

It is not just music; we excel in all creative exports, and do well in all sectors. Being creative is just something we do well, and over the years the UK has produced the most innovative and diverse range of creative talent imaginable. We have been successful because we have ensured that artists, creators and those who invest in our talent have been properly rewarded for the work they produce. What we must carry on doing, by way of our intellectual property laws, is ensure that that continues, and resist the ever-constant desire and temptation to tinker with legislation. As we consider the Hargreaves report and wait for the Government’s response, it is worth while reminding ourselves that our intellectual property and copyright laws have not done not too badly in the face of some serious challenges over the past decade, most notably from the online market and the technology that develops almost daily.

So, what does the Hargreaves report bring to the table? What innovations does it have to offer? In considering the report, it is almost impossible to set aside how it was conceived and initiated. This time around, it was the Prime Minister himself, after, I think, a very good lunch with his friends at Google, who posed the question: do our intellectual property and copyright laws get in the way of the emergence and development of a Google in the UK? He then got Ian Hargreaves and his team dispatched to find the answer. The review was perhaps unfairly christened the “Google review”, and those of us who care passionately about our creative industries observed all this with varying degrees of horror.

The question behind the review was: what can be done to help search engines and social networking sites such as Google develop in the UK? Not one shred of evidence, however, has ever been produced to support the initial prime ministerial contention. We must remember that the UK has some fantastic search engines and social networking sites, not least Friends Reunited, which could even be credited with starting the whole social networking revolution. Compared with where Google comes from—silicon valley in mid-California—the UK is an altogether different cultural and economic environment. The set of conditions that exist in silicon valley are unique—they do not even exist on the east coast of the United States, let alone in the UK, or anywhere else in Europe or the rest of the world. Nevertheless, Ian Hargreaves was discharged to bring mid-California to a business park off the M25 in Shoreditch.

A number of us were concerned about all the talk of Google, because Google has not been a great friend of intellectual property over the years, and I think it would be fair to say that it has been a bit cavalier in its approach to IP rights. Mr Chope, if you were to put one of your favourite artists into the Google search engine you would be directed to a number of sites that totally disregard and ignore the intellectual property rights of the artist. Having Google as an inspiration for such a review did not so much set alarm bells ringing as put whole fire departments on stand-by.

To be fair, however, Ian Hargreaves did his job diligently. All talk of good will was quickly abolished, and we had a report that considered economic growth and its inhibitors. The professor approached his task professionally and was not too consumed by the almost baffling inception of the review that he was tasked to pursue. At first, it was all about, “Will he or won’t he recommend a system of fair use, as championed in the US?”. We were able to find out what the good professor was thinking, because he produced a blog that we could follow while he did the review. Looking at all the air miles that were being clocked up in the States, a number of us feared that he was considering adopting fair use as a central recommendation in his report, but he decided that fair use was not for us because, as the report said, it was

“unlikely to be legally feasible”.

What we do not know, Mr Chope, is whether if it was legally feasible you would be looking at fair use coming soon to a creative industry near you. Fair use would have been an absolute disaster for our creative industries, and I think a collective sigh of relief was exhaled when that proposal was dropped.

So what does the Hargreaves report recommend? There are 10 recommendations, and Professor Hargreaves makes the bold assertion that if all 10 were adopted in full, UK GDP would increase from 0.3% to 0.6%. We in politics say that that is a courageous statement, but it was the claim that Hargreaves made. I will not list all the recommendations. Some of them are uncontroversial and are generally supported, some are hangovers from previous reports, and some come directly from the Gowers review. Some are new, some are interesting and some have excited all sorts of concerns and anxieties.

The major underlying recommendation—the one that tops the chart at No. 1—is that all future regulation should be based on evidence. The importance of economic evidence is inarguable—I do not think that anybody could disagree that economic evidence is required for any future regulation on IP laws and copyright—but it is one thing to say that evidence is required and another to act on it, rather than dismissing it if one does not happen to like it. For example, the report does not fully acknowledge the economic case for the current copyright framework, and has little to say about the huge amounts of investment in, and profitability already being derived from, innovative digital products and services. Given the success of creative UK plc, that omission is baffling. The report casually dismisses crucial research and evidence, because it comes from industry, as though it were mere lobbying, even though the Government charge industry time and again with providing evidence and doing research to help shape future policy.

Other recommendations that have received attention include proposals to set up a digital copyright exchange, permit the licensing of orphan works and create further exceptions to copyright. If anything in the report counts as a big idea, it is the creation of a digital copyright exchange. The report describes it as the digital opportunity: the means of unlocking the UK creative industry’s economic potential and solving the problems of rights clearances that Hargreaves maintains give copyright law such a bad press.

The report says of the DCE:

“The prize is to build on the UK’s current competitive advantage in creative content to become a leader in licensing services for global content markets; in short to make the UK the best place in the world to do business in digital content.”

Who could argue with that? But what exactly is the DCE and what is envisaged for it? Is it to be a virtual content megastore in UK cyberspace for rights owners, traders and users, or is it more of a brand name to describe a collection of rights registries and rights databases across the internet? More fundamentally, what will it look like, who will pay for it and how, and who will run it?

In many respects, a DCE already exists, based on a variety of technical standards developed by the music, film and publishing industries and other sectors of the creative industries, which have rapidly developed comprehensive databases with ownership data and online functionality. In such a critical matter, Government must be careful not to duplicate or replicate work already being done within the sector and to work hand in glove with the industry if they are minded to accept the recommendation on a digital copyright exchange.

The DCE must be voluntary and recognise that different industries license content in different ways and for different purposes. Hargreaves hints that non-participation in the exchange might lead to penalties for rights holders, such as being exempted from some of the measures in the Digital Economy Act 2010. That is definitely not welcome. It could create a two-tier approach to rights holding, run counter to international copyright treaties, and discriminate against smaller rights holders.

The report recommends a Government-led approach involving the appointment of some public figure as a digital champion, almost a digital tsar. There are hints that the Government’s delay in responding to the Hargreaves report is due to difficulty finding that digital champion. We wait to see who it will be. I think that all of us would like to see the job description.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the issue of the digital copyright exchange, will he comment on the use of the word “exchange”? An exchange implies a place where one goes to do business. How does he feel about that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for bringing that up. There are many models for exchanges. An exchange for the creative industry will be difficult to conceive and create. There will be issues categorising work. The report recommends a digital champion. We must know who it will be and how he will be found.

Another issue is orphan works. The idea is that if an owner cannot be identified, a standard statutory licence would be obtained and the payment would go into a fund to pay the owner if they are ever identified, or towards general social use. Hargreaves suggests that if a work cannot be found on the DCE, it should be declared orphaned and become available for licence. I hope that before the Government consider and conclude on that recommendation, they will re-examine the legal situation and take time to consider the British Copyright Council’s proposals on the issue.

Other recommendations, such as those dealing with format shifting and parody, are also hangovers from the Gowers review. On format shifting, Hargreaves wants to proceed without compensation to creators. That is likely to run contrary to the copyright directive and would put the UK out of line with the vast majority of European states. I hope that when the Government consider that recommendation, they will put the interests of British musicians, creators and artists before anything else. The proposed exception for parody is more mystifying. There are countless examples online, for example on YouTube, of parody being enjoyed as part of UK entertainment. If the Government are minded to accept such an exception, they must give us evidence that parody is a problem. Examples have been highlighted, but we need evidence.

The report’s acknowledgement of the importance of an effective rights regime is welcome and puts the report in the context of the Digital Economy Act 2010. The Act is the other weighty piece of work sitting in the Government’s in tray, and it is time that they got down to work and started to implement all the measures agreed in it. We appreciate that there have been difficulties with the DEA, including the judicial review and ongoing work by Ofcom, and we know that tensions remain in the coalition, but it is time to implement what has been agreed.

The Government have it in their hands to help our creative industries significantly and substantially. The DEA was established to reconnect the public with legitimate means of purchasing online materials, and it is time to get on with it. One big theme in the Hargreaves report is economic growth and removing the barriers to development. Illegally taking creative works for nothing is the biggest barrier to growth confronting our creative industries, and that more than anything threatens jobs and investment. The DEA contains real, available and tangible measures to deal with the biggest inhibitor of growth in our creative sector.

[Mr Foster]

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman a second time during his excellent speech. He says that the Government should get on with the DEA. Is he aware—I know he is—of the problems discovered involving site blocking? Not least because of outstanding court cases, the Government are unable to implement the Act in its current form.

[Pete Wishart]

I have seen the early-day motion to which I think the right hon. Gentleman is referring; it was kicking around just now. I have certainly received correspondence on the issue. That seems to be one of the great misconceptions about the DEA. People are always referring to disconnection, but nowhere in the DEA is there any mention of disconnection. If any technical measure were to be enforced, as he knows, numerous measures would have to be agreed by Government and Ofcom before anything like that could be considered. What would happen is that people would receive a polite letter asking them to stop taking music for nothing and directing them towards legal sites. I am glad that he mentioned the subject.