| Legal Deposit Libraries Bill
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Mr. Todd: I should like to illustrate further the complexities of the matter. One would interpret the legislation as applying to websites, which can contain contributions from a wide variety of sources for which one cannot vouch. That illustrates again how difficult it would be to put together arrangements that properly protect the person who provides the information, the person who makes it available to those who view it and the business that creates the sources of information. Dr. Howells: Yes, that is an important point. Mr. Benton, I am sure that you, like me, were given some very useful information when you first came to the House. I did not know, for example, that by simply sending a copy of a constituent’s letter to a third party, such as the police, MPs are in effect publishing the information in it, which may be defamatory. We could get into deep water on this issue and it is important to remember my hon. Friend’s point. Mr. Chris Bryant (Rhondda): Notwithstanding that point, those who do research on a historical moment 50 years ago will get out copies of The Times and The Guardian. They will probably analyse the physical copies and have terrible asthma by the end of the day. [Interruption.] Yes, it might be on fiche, but it depends. A local newspaper is more likely to be the physical thing, but The Times and The Guardian are more likely to be on fiche. However, those who want to analyse the politics of last week at some point in the future will be unable to do so without, for instance, seeing what was on BBC Online. The BBC has no strategy for ensuring that such information is part of the intellectual moment and without it future historians who do their research about today will find it difficult to do a full and proper job. Column Number: 13 Dr. Howells: As someone who wrecked most of his middle years researching a PhD—[Interruption.] No, it was not on the French revolution. The period that I studied was 1937–57. It was very recent, but what I read probably bore little relationship to what actually occurred because I used official sources almost entirely. At their raciest, the official sources of the future might include the Hansards of this Committee, but there will be no mention of the bloodletting that may have occurred when my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich pulled the Bill together. I entirely understand what my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant) says. The issue will be difficult and we shall probably have debates about how to select the material because there has never been so much available. I dare say that some is trivial, but some is important. A researcher might be studying something that looks trivial now, but in 100 years, it might hold the key to understanding what this period is all about. Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion) rose— Dr. Howells: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, who will probably quote to me the fact that the National Library of Wales—a great institution—has one of the great collections of pornography. Who is to say whether or not that pornography will be important in understanding what people were doing in the early part of the 21st century? Mr. Thomas: I think that I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, although I understand that the British Library actually has the best collection—not that I have seen it myself. However, I wanted to ask him into which category he would place MPs’ websites—the very important or the totally trivial? Dr. Howells: It is a good question. We are going off the point a bit and you will drag me back in a second, Mr. Benton. I always feel that MPs are in a privileged position. If we are any good, we talk to our constituents and receive their letters. If it is possible for us to enhance the richness of the information that comes to us from our constituencies, online means will provide future researchers with a great insight into the problems that concerned people at any point in time. I know that some hon. Members feel that their work is important enough to deposit their entire physical filing system at deposit libraries, while others of us have a clear-out every six months because we cannot believe that anyone would be interested in anything that we have ever said or written. 3.15 pmMr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam): That raises the question of who will be defined as a publisher for the purposes of the Bill. Will the Minister explain that? The historian of the future may want MPs’ websites from today, but who will define whether those MPs are publishers? By extension, people who do not think that they are publishers now may be so deemed in the future and required to provide their material to deposit libraries. Column Number: 14 Dr. Howells: That is an important question, and we will come to it more during the debates on the amendments. The short answer is that the definitions will be set out in regulations, and the hon. Gentleman will see that the Bill includes indications of how we will go about defining a publisher. However, like the hon. Member for Ceredigion, he is right to ask the question. Where do we put the limit on what someone can publish before they are defined as a publisher? The great strength of online publishing is that we are not limited by having to get a printer, understand layout or provide the finances for publication. Important work can be published online, and it is an extremely democratic system that turns upside down our notions of what constitutes a publication or publisher. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) was right to raise a complicated question. I am sure that the Committee will join me in thanking the publishers, deposit libraries and other stakeholders for their continuing support of the underlying principle of the legislation and their willingness to explore all the issues connected with the Bill. We will continue that active and productive dialogue with publishers and deposit libraries and look forward to its continuation after the conclusion of this Committee and prior to Report and Third Reading. That support and debate will be more important than ever when it comes to the drafting of regulations and their implementation, so we intend to create an independent advisory panel, for which I know the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire has called. It is an excellent idea, and I am sure that his amendment will detail a good outline of how we could establish such a body. The panel will include deposit library and publishing industry representatives and other stakeholders and experts to oversee implementation and help shape potential regulations. The panel will carry on the initial work of the joint committee for voluntary deposit; it will be set up before the first set of regulations, and will assist in shaping them. The regulations probably will be restricted to offline material and draw heavily on the model of the voluntary system currently in place and agreed by deposit libraries and publishers. It is clear that the online world requires a more substantive consultation process to explore and address the complexities of the issues. In particular, we know that online publishers are concerned about cross-border issues, which we are seeking to resolve. We will move slowly and carefully to create regulations that will, over time, serve to build the interests of the national archive in a selective, rather than comprehensive fashion, as is consistent with the complexity and size of the online publishing environment. We will ensure that there is a minimum burden on publishers and deposit libraries and that their concerns can always be taken fully into account. That is why we support the Bill. Mr. Chris Mole (Ipswich): I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Benton. I also welcome my colleagues to the Committee for what I hope will be an interesting Column Number: 15 discussion of my Bill. There was enormous consensus on Second Reading about the importance of such legislation.As we all appreciate, the world of new media publishing is fast changing and we are here today to discuss a Bill whose generic nature we consider to be the best way to tackle the issue. In fact, the practice of legislating for a legal deposit is not far behind the technological advances in publishing. A few weeks ago, as the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire mentioned, the New Zealand Parliament passed the National Library of New Zealand Act 2003, which is designed to protect New Zealand’s most precious heritage items and to allow its library to operate with credibility in the electronic environment. That reinforces the point made about the international nature of much of the information, especially as we move into the online world with all the difficulties about the concepts of where ideas actually reside. I am encouraged by later amendments, which show how the Secretary of State can address some of those issues in due course. As has been said, the process of a private Member’s Bill is, and will be, very different from the processes that the Government will pursue in setting out secondary legislation intended to address many of the points that have been raised. Indeed, much of the intention has been for that to unfold in various tranches that allow the different sorts of media to be addressed one at a time. Offline media will obviously be the first to be addressed. Some of the media with more complex difficulties, to which the Minister referred, will be dealt with later after even more extensive consultation. The Bill will create a credible approach to working in the electronic environment, as has been achieved in New Zealand. The British Library and other deposit libraries have an enormous shared expertise in this area, which is respected throughout the world. The Legal Deposit Libraries Bill is essential for them to build on their excellent work of collecting and preserving print material by extending legal deposits to non-print material. Mr. Thomas: On that point, does the hon. Gentleman share my slight concern that the definition of the relevant material that needs to be collected as part of the United Kingdom’s archives will be decided by regulation and by a Minister or a Secretary of State? As he has just acknowledged, the expertise is based in the copyright libraries. What process does he have in mind, to which the Bill could lead, whereby some discretion and knowledge base could come into play that would allow librarians and archivists who have examined the material for a long time and voluntarily collected it to have some sort of influence on deciding what the crucial material is and who is a publisher? The Bill does not provide answers to those two questions. Mr. Mole: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, which goes to the heart of why it is better to address many of these issues through secondary Column Number: 16 legislation. Secondary legislation gives the Secretary of State extensive opportunity to identify all those interests and to hold the rein between them to ensure that no one party has a particular veto or ruling position on the answers to any of those questions, many of which will be thorny and difficult. That is why I have had to work very closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the British Library and as many representatives of the publishing industry as possible. I thank them for their continuing support.Some important issues have been raised, especially since Second Reading. Even on Second Reading, I acknowledged the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire raised about the importance of high-value, low-volume publications. When we consider new clause 1 we should be able to see how that can unfold and reassurances can be given. Clause 1 imposes a duty on publishers to deposit any published material with the legal deposit library or libraries that is or are entitled to receive a copy of that material in the medium in which it is published. It describes the types of printed material that must be deposited and provides that non-print works that are prescribed by regulations must also be deposited. There are no details in the Bill regarding the form of non-print materials because of the fast moving pace of change in the technology involved. The clause specifically addresses the issues of sound and film recordings, identifying the limited circumstances under which those will be covered. That is, of course, only when they are incidental features of the main body of a work and not its purpose. Both film and sound recordings will continue to be collected by the National Sound Archive. Question put and agreed to. Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 2 NEW AND ALTERNATIVE EDITIONS Mr. Moss: I beg to move amendment No. 10, in
I shall be brief. As I interpret the Bill, the form in which information is to be published is to be determined in accordance with regulations made by Secretary of State. The amendment simply says that the publisher should be able to determine the form or medium in which he deposits that information. After all, the publisher has the costs. He has to spend time doing it and to make the arrangements. It seems not unreasonable that as long as the material is deposited in one form or another, the choice of the medium should be down to the publisher, not the library. It is up to the libraries to ensure that they can receive information in all sorts of formats rather than impose a format on a publisher that may involve them in additional costs and arrangements. Mr. Thomas: I just wanted to say a few words that are unfortunately in opposition to what the hon. Gentleman has just said. The danger in the Column Number: 17 amendment is twofold. First, it takes away from the librarians and archivists a decision about the best medium of preservation. That would worry me. I do not impugn for one minute the publishing industry, but it would be easy to opt for the cheapest medium to be deposited at the relevant legal deposit library rather than the best medium that might be useful for the long-term preservation of that material.Secondly, and allied to that, a legal deposit library may have collected that type of material in a particular format for several years and made it available to readers in that format. For the publisher to insist on offering it in a different format, even though it is still available in the old format, would make it difficult for that library to deal with its readers. It would be difficult to make the material constantly available. Let me give an example. This does not come under the aegis of the Bill but it is work that I used to do and it illustrates the point. If a library collects a video archive of the output of S4C on Betamax, it should be allowed to continue to do so on Betamax because it has the necessary machines to make that archive available to the public. If the publisher says that it must not be made available, or that it must be collected on DVD, that would put an extra strain on resources, storage, conservation and possible cataloguing. Mr. Moss: I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but agree with him only so far. Why should a publisher have to deal with the costs of returning to outdated technology just to satisfy a library that had not kept up to date? 3.30 pmMr. Thomas: I certainly accept that point. I do not think for a moment that the Secretary of State would allow regulations to exist that forced that on a publisher. However, the clause relates to more than one medium. The same work might be published in several media; it might be available online, offline and in different digital formats. We know how much we have already lost. Indeed, it is curious that we can pick up a book that is 500 years old and still read and understand it, but we cannot pick up digital media that is five years old and still easily read or understand that. That is the difficulty in the Bill. Such issues must be thrashed out and the interests of the national archive must be paramount. I am not suggesting that we disregard publishers’ interests or do not consult them about the best usual medium for the deposit of work, but if the Bill is to mean anything, the information deposited under it must be available to readers in an easy format from libraries. It must be catalogued and available in a technologically suitable form. Decisions about deposits should ideally be left to the Secretary of State who, as the hon. Member for Ipswich said, can draw a ring around those issues. However, placing the onus on the Secretary of State to come to an agreement with a publisher on every medium seems too great a centralisation of responsibilities, and suggests not enough trust in the system, or in our archivists and librarians to get it right—and they do get it right most of the time. Column Number: 18 Mr. Bryant: I rise to agree in large measure with what the hon. Member for Ceredigion has said—it is the first time I have ever said that, so I have broken my duck. The word “medium” is used in the narrow rather than the broad sense. Most people think that medium means a book, a film, a play or an online publication. It is made clear in clause 9 that
Therefore, the technical standards necessary to access a particular work in a digital medium will be as important as the provision of the material in the first place. Clause 6(2)(b) will require the person
None the less, it is important that the onus for ensuring access to work is on the publisher. If, for example, someone complied with the law by still providing copies of The Times in microfiche form, but in a microfiche form that was completely different from that which is used by almost every library in the world, they would be deliberately seeking to subvert the meaning of the law. That is why it is important that the onus for ensuring access to work should be on the publisher rather than the library. Mr. Allan: I wonder whether the primary purpose of the clause is to deal with situations in which something is published in printed form and on CD-ROM, and to resolve whether it is acceptable for a publisher to say, “Right. The legal deposit libraries will have the CD-ROMs, because that is cheaper for me.” In those circumstances, can the libraries insist on having the printed format, because that is the most acceptable one? I am trying to clarify whether we are dealing with those situations, rather than situations involving the technical choice between two different online formats, which is another matter that we would deal with in regulations about online formats. This is about judgments as to whether a publisher can say that they will provide the product that is cheapest for them to deliver, or whether a library can insist on having a more expensive format. In the context of the amendment, who makes the decision as to whether a library has the power to insist on the more expensive format? It would be useful if the Minister could respond to that point. Dr. Howells: That is an invitation that I cannot refuse. This is fascinating. We have had a short but good debate on an issue that is central in many ways. It is not appropriate for the publisher to have the final say as to the medium of deposit, as that medium may have implications for the libraries. I am thinking, for example, of storage. However, I have a great deal of sympathy with the argument of the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire, and I want to reassure him that, before any regulations are made, including those that spell out the medium of deposit, publishers and other stakeholders will be fully consulted to ascertain what is best for all. Column Number: 19 As hon. Members have said, since almost the first decade of the 20th century, a good voluntary system has evolved whereby common sense has almost always prevailed. I want the spirit of that to continue, certainly in the Bill, and the way to achieve that is by trying to ensure that a good arbitration system is set out in the regulations, so that the best solution to individual cases or quandaries is found without too much hassle. I am sure that that can be done. Mr. Mole: The purpose of clause 2 is to address the issue of duplicate publications, which was raised on Second Reading. It provides that it is not necessary to deposit a new edition of a work if it is substantially the same as one already published in that medium. Secondary legislation would detail the circumstances in which a work was considered substantially the same as a previously published work, and determine the medium of deposit where the same work was published in different media. However, it is thought that print will remain, as now, the preferred medium. Mr. Bryant: It is important that the iterations of certain works come into the archive. A classic example is Izaak Walton’s “Lives”, which changed every five years. The changes are just as important as the final text that we now know and that is published. Indeed, nowadays many publishers will publish several iterations. In the process of establishing the regulations, it will be just as important on occasion to ensure that different iterations of the same work, even though they are substantially the same, remain in the national archive. Mr. Mole: I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. Those are exactly the sorts of issues that will have to be thrashed out through regulations. Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman mentioned regulations, and I should like to ask him about that. The matter raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda is of extreme cultural importance, but not so important in terms of intellectual property, which the Bill covers. I think that the cultural importance issue is overcome by the fact that libraries can buy extra editions if necessary. We are trying to protect intellectual property. I want to ask about a particular proposal in the Bill. Regulations set out by the Secretary of State will frame certain matters, but we all know that there will be thorny issues that fall through the net or create problems. Is there an appeals system? What happens if nothing seems to work properly and a particular legal deposit library wants to get hold of a particular publication, and the publisher says, “No”? What sort of appeals system or arbitration could be used to decide such matters? Would it be the responsibility of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport or would it be decided elsewhere? Mr. Mole: I thank the hon. Gentleman for those two points, of which the second will be covered by clause 3. Column Number: 20 With regard to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire, and given the commitments made by the Minister earlier, it is clear that there will be full consultation with publishers and other interested parties in the publishing community before any regulations are made in this area, and all representations will be given full consideration. Mr. Moss: I am grateful for the assurances given by the Bill’s promoter and by the Minister that full consultation will take place with the interested parties. In the light of that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 3 ENFORCEMENT Mr. Mole: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in
The amendment clarifies the meaning of the term “publisher”, and is necessary because of revisions elsewhere in the Bill. It is a technical amendment to make it clear that the definition of publisher in clause 3 is specific to that clause. Mr. Thomas: I was rather ahead of myself in asking this question earlier, so I will now return to it. I do not believe that my question on appeals and arbitration is provided for in clause 3, and there are no amendments to deal with the matter. However, I want it to be put on record that I would like the DCMS, the Minister and the promoter to consider the matter. We are discussing a statutory process in which, if a legal deposit library feels that someone has failed, there is a procedure for it to go through to ensure that it receives a copy of a publication or its equivalent. Mr. Mole: I hope that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that the Bill tends to focus on the publications rather than the publishers, but that in this clause the specific identification of the publisher is required. Elsewhere in the Bill, the intention is to retain as flexible an interpretation as possible, because of the questions raised earlier as to who constitutes a publisher, with reference, for example, to the websites of Members of Parliament. Mr. Thomas: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, which I accept, and to which I intend to return. However, the point that I tried to make earlier— The Chairman: Order. If the hon. Gentleman wants to discuss the clause, I suggest that he postpones his remarks until the clause stand part debate. At present, we are discussing amendment No. 1, and the proper procedure is for us to debate that amendment first. Amendment agreed to. Column Number: 21 Mr. Moss: I beg to move amendment No. 11, in
This is a probing amendment, through which we seek clarification as to the meaning of some of the words in lines 29 and 30. The amendment sets out clearly that a criminal conviction will be the result of enforcement. I understand that in the past the matter has been dealt with in a civil court, but we were concerned that the words used in the Bill left the matter open ended. The question is whether the cost of making good the failure to comply is simply the cost as defined by the library, or whether it is the cost or the price of the material that is being held. The meaning is not clear from the wording. The amendment is therefore intended to probe for a clear definition of those words, as there are obvious implications for certain publishers. There would be enormous financial consequences for them if the clause was interpreted in the wrong way. 3.45 pm |
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Prepared 6 June 2003 |
