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4 Mar 2003 : Column 699—continued
Mr. Bryant: My right hon. Friend is right. I only wish that the capacity to download into the Rhondda valley was available rather swifter, as we seem to have no prospect of broadband technology for some years to come—2007 is the most likely date at the moment. I worry that we are perpetuating a gap between the information rich and the information poor.
Be that as it may, one of my concerns is this: when I was first elected, one of the first things that I did was to ask the Department of Trade and Industry when the copyright directive would be incorporated into UK law. I was originally told that it would be last March, then last July, then definitely by the end of the year—and it is still not quite ready. Major issues need to be resolved if we are to achieve the balance between the rights of the consumer and the individual and the rights of the industry, including the need for competition and for a strong music and cinema industry.
Some of the issues are recondite, but must none the less be swiftly addressed if we are to stand any chance of halting piracy. They include embedded phonograms, the time-shifting of recordings, and incidental reproductions in the many processes that are involved inside a computer of material that would otherwise be seen as copyright. The many exemptions from copyright that exist in this country—for the blind, for the hard of hearing, for libraries, and for many other public interest reasons—are still important, and we need to get the balance right. That is why the new clause is wrong and, furthermore, relates to the wrong part of the Bill. I simply do not believe that handing over such a power to Ofcom would be the right means of ensuring that there is a proper debate about piracy, that we properly strike the balance between the needs of consumers and the needs of industry—
1.45 pm
Mr. Smith: If my hon. Friend does not think that Ofcom is the right place, where is?
Mr. Bryant: My right hon. Friend pre-empts me, and I know that he is not in favour of pre-emption. I would merely say that the Patent Office, which historically has responded only to complaints and to changes in the law, should have a proactive role, and it is undoubtedly where the power should remain. Of course, different elements of the law are implemented in different ways. The private Member's Bill introduced last year by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) would have ensured that certain aspects of the matter were dealt with much more robustly. That is why I do not support the new clause.
Mr. Allan: I find myself very much in sympathy with the comments made by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale). I remember that a famous battle of Maldon was fought a couple of millennia ago. The hon. Gentleman said that he did not think that hardware copyright protection was the right way forward. It is in that spirit that I rise to speak, because I am concerned that the thrust of the new clause is in that direction—a direction that has been very much advanced in the United States through measures such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 and which is causing huge controversy between people in the industry. That is particularly true in relation to the internet, where people in Europe and in the US often represent different points of view.
We discussed "Top of the Pops" in Committee, and it was bound to raise its head on repeated occasions. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) for giving us another chance to talk about it. Yes, I freely confess that I was a "Top of the Pops" taper in my youth. [Interruption.] I am asked whether I drank R. White's lemonade. I was not such a slave to advertising.
Taping represented a system of "try before you buy". The important shift that has occurred in the music context is that the trying is taking place but the buying no longer necessarily does so. In the 1970s we would tape "Top of the Pops", and if there were a couple of songs we liked, we went out and bought them. We bought the vinyl because we liked having the record sleeve to touch—that is the added value that the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford talked about. We have not yet developed a comparable system in the digital world. The problem arises in trying simply to transfer what was done in the analogue world to the digital world. That is why I am sceptical about hardware protection. In the analogue world, one controlled the physical media—vinyl, compact disc or whatever—and had some way of policing them. In the digital world, there are no physical media to control. That creates a raft of problems, and the question is how to address them, not whether they need to be addressed.
There is a particular problem in the audio and music business in that the material can be shifted around and no comparable legitimate channel has yet been established. That is a specific market problem. The industry maintains as its primary distribution channel the traditional retail system whereby CDs cost in the
range of £10 to £15, but those prices will not stand in the digital world. It is hard to maintain a system under which, effectively, one has two price ranges for the same material—one of £10 to £15 and another that perhaps reflects the real costs of distribution over the digital system, whereby the record company and the artist can still get the same amount of money, but have transferred the costs to the end consumer and taken out the distribution costs, so that the product sells more in the £3 to £5 range. It is therefore essential to develop that second digital distribution channel.
Mr. Mole: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to shift from the ownership of a particular item of music to micro-billing or micro-payment for the rental of an item on demand, be it a video or music track? The challenge is that video-on-demand trials have not competed economically with the comparable physical space model, the video hire shop. Perhaps he would agree that when a video arrives in broadband form for the first time in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant), it should be called "A Fish Called Rhondda".
Mr. Allan: I will not follow up that last point.
Mr. Allan: No doubt the hon. Gentleman is about to say that he has never heard that one before.
Different competing models may be successful, and I think we agree on the objectives of finding a successful model.
Mr. Bryant: I just want to say that a fish and chip shop in my constituency is called "A Fish Called Rhondda".
Mr. Allan: I am pleased to hear that.
The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Mole) makes an important point about different competing models. One is the micro-payment at time-of-use model by which the customer pays by usage rather than for obtaining copyright material. I do not think that that is likely to work. The more effective model is to make a reasonable payment to obtain fair use, which is the traditional method. People could then do whatever time, format and space shifting—those are the technical terms—they wanted with the material. For example, they might have an iPod device or a computer for listening to MP3s. That approach is more likely to succeed than micro-payment at the time of use.
Pete Wishart: Surely the problem is lack of regulation of the internet. Records and movies will still be available for free if people place them on the internet. Until we have effective regulation that benefits the companies involved, such ideas and projects will fail.
Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the internet. The valid point has been made that by encouraging broadband access we are creating the conditions in which even more piracy can occur. If the Government succeed in meeting their target of millions
of broadband users, they will create millions of potential piraters. Who would be liable for that? I fear that the new clause would steer us on the route of making internet service providers responsible for content. I am not convinced that that is right. I would be loth to tell an internet service provider that, as part of its licence condition, it must implement a particular hardware or software copyright protection, just as I would not want the Royal Mail to be prosecuted if people used it to send dodgy pirated videos. In general, the Bill establishes that internet service providers are more like the Royal Mail than a publisher, and that is the correct approach.The people who should be prosecuted are those who put up the sites. We should go after the publishers of the material, and we can do that under current law. As someone who enjoys music and film, I find it offensive to see people with dodgy videos at car boot sales and people on the street with dodgy CDs. I want to crack down on them. The same is true of abuses of the internet. There is a debate on whether such controls should be extended to other jurisdictions. Certainly, the EU should have a common framework as part of the copyright directive. However, if people are malicious or stupid enough to have a site that says, "Come and get illegal pirated material here", and they have a locus in our jurisdiction, we should go after them under the general law. I do not think that the best way to deal with the problem is to create specific internet law because the legal provisions already exist.
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