Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 117)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2006
MS LAVINIA
CAREY, MR
DAVID FERGUSON,
MR DOMINIC
MCGONIGAL
AND MS
JOANNA CAVE
Q100 Chairman: There is actually
a difference between your position or at least certainly the position
of the MMF and PPL. The MMF have argued that there should be a
limit on assignment to 35 years and, therefore, it should be for
the performer to choose beyond that as to whether or not to maintain
the rights with the record company or assign them elsewhere. What
is PPL's response to that?
Mr McGonigal: We do not actually
get involved in the artists' contracts; that is between the record
company and the artists. There is a general position that this
should be a matter of contract. As far as we are concerned in
PPL, all of those 8.5 million tracks are available for licence
and there is not the sort of `use it or lose it' issue as far
as the PPL repertoire is concerned.
Q101 Chairman: We will need to ask
the record companies that question.
Mr Ferguson: Watch them duck!
Q102 Adam Price: I would like to
pursue David's argument that just because something comes out
of copyright does not mean that it is somehow free and it is in
the public domain. I can understand that argument in the context
of CDs and physical products because the record company or whatever
still has an effective monopoly on manufacturing and distribution
generally, but surely does the Internet not make that different
because, if something comes out of copyright and somebody has
a copy, they can share it then legally on a peer-to-peer basis
free because there are no transaction costs then and potentially
one million copies could be made available free if it comes out
of copyright? Have I misunderstood?
Mr Ferguson: No, I think the key
point I am making about the public domain is that the public domain
actually needs maintenance. All right, something might come out
of copyright and very briefly have a flowering renaissance, but
actually it is not really terribly real. The real importance,
when things come out of copyright and genuinely their economic
life has come to an end in the sense that there is nobody left
to benefit from them, is how are they looked after in the public
domain. That is the much more worrying thing, how you make sure
that something remains in the archive for future generations to
build on. As was pointed out earlier on, creativity does ride
on the shoulders of predecessors and yes, invariably all of us
are taking an idea that started at a certain point and adapting
it further as we go along. As Emma pointed out at the beginning,
copyright is the ideal regime to do this in because, if you genuinely
start sort of plagiarising somebody else's work and that person
is entitled to economic reward, but to do real work, as the Da
Vinci Code case proves, is good and it is creating wealth.
I really think that, with in and out of copyright, there are also
really good arguments, people would say, for never having gone
to copyright. I am sure that with Mozart it would not be a question
so much of paying royalties to his descendants, but it would stop
some awful orchestras doing some really appalling recordings,
so why not!
Ms Cave: If I can comment as well
on the visual arts, the public domain needing maintenance issue
that David raised is absolutely correct. If you look at the whole
repertoire by the impressionists, for example, it is all out of
copyright now, so unlimited numbers of reproductions can be made
of those works. I am sure you have all received tins of biscuits
at Christmas that have Monet's Lilies on the lid, calendars,
postcards, posters, digital archives, et cetera, et cetera, it
is limitless, so there you have a really good example of free
access, but the original works need maintenance and it is very
expensive. They need conservation, they need to be preserved and
they need to be looked after, so David is absolutely right, that
the public domain does not come free, it comes at a cost.
Q103 Chairman: Are you suggesting
that biscuit manufacturers should be paying for the maintenance
of Monet?
Mr Ferguson: Absolutely, yes.
Ms Cave: I do not know if I am
suggesting that. I am just giving you an example.
Q104 Chairman: But you are saying
that there should remain at least some requirement on those who
use works, however ancient they are, to pay towards maybe the
maintenance of the paintings or the descendants of the creators?
Ms Cave: Well, there is a question
to be answered there, is there not, because who does foot the
bill? I am sure if you spoke to public museums, they would perhaps
welcome that kind of innovation. There are lots and lots of original
artworks that are not in museums, but are still of interest to
our national heritage and the life-plus-70 term can be very, very
useful to help those families look after that heritage until the
time comes when the public at large becomes interested in them
again. A really good example is paintings by Dame Laura Knight.
Dame Laura Knight was the first woman to be admitted to the Royal
Academy, very significant, but went completely out of fashion,
so nobody was particularly interested in the works that she left
behind, but the family did have to maintain those works, and the
small amount of income they were able to collect during the life-plus-70
term helped them to do that. Happily for Dame Laura Knight, she
is becoming interesting again and it is a credit to them that
they have done that work so that the work is available for the
country and the world, so there is an issue around public domain.
Mr McGonigal: I have just one
more comment on that question which is that there was an assumption
behind it that distribution online is a free distribution, but
there are costs, particularly the upfront costs. On the music
side, there is the cost of digitally remastering tracks, of maintaining
them and putting them into new formats as new formats come along
and then making them available to any number of distributors or
online retailers, so there are costs there. Again that argument
goes towards having a copyright term because then you actually
reward the person who maintains that catalogue which will not
be just a few songs, but it will be hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of tracks which can then be made available with that reward built
in.
Q105 Philip Davies: Dominic, you
stated, coming on to government structures, that the Government
deals with the creative industries in a piecemeal fashion with
things coming under the DCMS, some under the DTI, other things
falling across different departments, creating a lack of focus
and understanding. Do you think that the Government's relationship
with the creative industries should be just handled better through
existing structures or would you prefer to see a single, cross-departmental
organisation?
Mr McGonigal: I think that it
is time to have another look at the government structure because
the current government structure in relation to business as a
whole is based on the industrial model and, as I say, we are now
moving into a knowledge economy which is a very different kind
of environment and I think there is a recognition of that in the
Gowers Review. The Gowers Review has been sponsored by the Treasury
with input from DTI and DCMS and I think that speaks volumes for
where we are moving with this knowledge economy. Looking at the
creative industry specifically, we are currently about 8% of GDP,
so we are already a major contributor. We are growing at twice
the rate of the rest of the economy and we are one of three or
four major drivers of the economy, identified by the Treasury
and the DTI, over the next few years and I think that the Government
should be able to deal with that on a more inclusive basis. At
the moment, having to deal with a few people in the DCMS and then
separately in the DTI, you lose any of that ongoing momentum.
What we have looked at is this core value of copyright which is
right at the heart of the economic value of the creative industries.
At the moment, we have a Patent Office, but no Copyright Office.
Actually there is now a proposal from the CBI for an IP Office
to look at the total value of both patents and copyrights to the
economy and you can see that linking in with a cross-departmental
structure that brings in both the DCMS and the DTI so that you
would have both the economic drivers and the cultural element
brought together under a single minister.
Q106 Philip Davies: For instance,
do you think that the Government understands and appreciates the
importance of the creative industries to the economy and to the
country as a whole or do you feel that it is underestimated?
Mr McGonigal: I think the Government
does understand it and I think it has been a relatively recent
thing. The figure of 8% has only really been acknowledged quite
recently and I notice that Gordon Brown, in his Budget Speech,
actually said "nearly 10%", so we have already improved
on our performance.
Ms Carey: I think that a very
good demonstration of why we need a more joined-up approach is
the fact that industry, through the Alliance, lobbied very hard
for a cross-departmental approach to counterfeiting and piracy,
IP theft, and that was several years ago. What came out of the
effort, which was supported across the board, I think, by the
industry, was this Creative Industries IPR Forum which broke down
into three groups looking at education and communication, looking
at new business models and looking at the problems of IP theft,
online and physical. The success of that Forum really leads one
to think that this idea could really work. There is another embodiment
of how this cross-departmental approach works and that is in the
IP Crime Group. The IP Crime Strategy was launched by Lord Sainsbury
in 2004 and the Group continues to work extremely effectively
by bringing together areas of government which have a direct responsibility
for IP crime and deterrence, sanctions and remedies and enforcement.
That covers the Home Office, the DCA, Education, the regional
offices, the DTI of course, the DCMS, and including the Department
for Work and Pensions because of course benefit fraud is involved
here as well in terms of crime, and they look at a whole range
of areas. I think that that model is a very useful model because
it helps us to see the input of all these different departments
in terms of IP crime and enforcement and I think the flip side
of that coin could easily be translated into a very useful cross-industry
type of approach to the positive sides of intellectual property
and copyright promotion and how it is going to benefit the economy
in the longer term.
Mr Ferguson: The IP Forum was
very interesting when it took place. I think the civil servants
in particular learned a lot during that process. The other thing
that was really interesting inside the IP Forum is how much we
learned from each other, extraordinary. I was on the Education
Sub-Committee and at the beginning of the Education Sub-Committee
it was warfare. There were the sort of Creative Commons people
on one side and my lot on the other and it looked like it was
going to go nowhere at all and in fact inside that Forum the very
sensible ideas to create principles emerged from that particular
group and I think it was invaluable for everybody who participated.
Also, the other key to it is whether anyone ever builds on it
and then takes those lessons and gets them up the next stage of
government because that is the problem with these things, that
the civil servants may get it, but whether that then informs anything
resembling policy is a different question.
Ms Carey: The interesting thing
about the New Business Models Group and what came out of that
was very clear, that government did not have a role in developing
new business models, but industry and the market have to decide
business models and to take advantage of new technologies and
that is what, I think, this inquiry is about. There I think it
is really important that creators and anybody who is developing
intellectual property which is going to have a value for the future
has to have a confidence in the regulatory regime, that they know
that they can take risks, that they can come up with all kinds
of fantastic ideas, the like of which I think you heard previously
in the 9 May session from people like Anthony Lilley. There are
fantastic opportunities for all types of intellectual property
to be created, but there needs to be confidence in the regime
that they have control over their rights.
Q107 Mr Hall: Individually or collectively,
you have referred directly to the Gowers Review which the Chancellor
set up in 2005 to look at intellectual property and what the Government
could do to contribute to that. Have you any suggestions of what
you would like to see come out of the Review?
Mr Ferguson: Yes.
Q108 Mr Hall: You can limit yourselves
to one each.
Ms Carey: I cannot give you one.
I will give you a small selection. Let the others go with one
and maybe I will add a missing one.
Mr Ferguson: There has to be some
reform of contract law that presupposes that contracts are not
just there for the maximum advantage of the person handing out
the contract and there has to be some responsibility on the contractor
to the person who is being contracted. Everybody has heard the
stories of the pop bands who have signed away absolutely everything.
That is one example of it. This is rife throughout the creative
industries. It happens in book publishing, it happens in photography,
it happens in broadcasting, that unfair contracts are given out
to creators who are continuously disadvantaged. The creators only
become advantaged if they happen to reach a certain economic point.
Sir Paul McCartney is not disadvantaged. The rock `n' roll band
that is rehearsing in the Methodist church hall in your constituency
at the moment will be given a crap contract and that should not
be the way it is done and there should be more that requires fairness
of treatment to all creators. I am not saying a subsidy, but fairness.
Ms Cave: Perhaps in addition to
that point, we would like to see better access to justice and
the barriers to challenge copyright infringement being lowered
so that creators and collecting societies can make use of the
law to challenge infringers.
Mr McGonigal: We have covered
some of the big ones here, the basic value of copyright, the government
structure to deal with this new economy and the copyright term,
and there are others, such as applying a three-step test to exceptions
and a couple of liability issues which I think Lavinia touched
on. If I can pick out one, it will be copyright education. As
I say, we are moving into a new environment here and I think,
just as we all grew up knowing that shoplifting is illegal, that
you do not just go into a shop and take something, I think we
have to understand that there is a code of conduct for us as citizens,
individuals, consumers online and I think it is learning what
that is that should be at the heart of it. I think the very basic
thing I would like to feed in here is what I was saying right
at the start, that copyright is about a creator owning what they
create. If you can get across the basic principle to even primary
schoolchildren, that, if they draw a picture, it is theirs, if
they do a little short story, it is theirs, and, if they put the
copyright symbol on that, then that would give them probably the
best understanding of what copyright really is about and then
all the other things about paying for things online or asking
permission before you do such and such with somebody else's painting
or their piece of music, that all follows much more easily, but
that basic concept, I think, would be a very powerful recommendation
from Gowers.
Ms Carey: In general, I would
say that, speaking as the Alliance Against IP Theft, one of the
key areas we would like to see reviewed is damages so that it
acts as an effective deterrent as well as providing some compensation
for people who have lost revenue because of IP infringement. I
would go back also to the enforcement issue, that we do need to
have more resources to be able to effectively enforce the existing
legislation. Just the fact that, for example, Section 107 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act has not been enacted seems
utter madness in a digital world where, if there are CDs and physical
piracy examples in the marketplace of people buying music, films,
games or software that is just on a disk and there is no trademark
infringement, that copyright law cannot be enforced and, when
there are no other infringements, Trading Standards cannot actually
enforce copyright just because of a technicality, it seems utter
madness.
Q109 Mr Hall: If I can ask a slightly
different question, if we, say, extend the life of copyright to
70 years or 95 years, we have had an explanation given to the
Committee about who the losers would be because they would be
the people who reproduce the music and sell it, and the gainers
would not be the consumers because the price of the product is
still the same, but the gainers are the original artists who recorded
the material or whatever, but how much is that gain and what does
it actually mean in pounds, shillings and pence?
Mr Ferguson: You cannot actually
quantify it like that, and this always seems to be entirely about
music and I am not sure if it should be. I think it should be
more of an abstract approach to this, but, all right, we are talking
about it in the context of sound recording. By and large, people
who have managed to have a career in music, and my own income
is based on the fact that over the period that I have worked I
have built up a collection of rights, of copyright works that
are mine, and they are all out there and they are all earning
some money for me and every time one of my works is used on a
television station or a radio station, I get an increasingly small
amount of money for it because again of broadcasting sort of splitting
up. Therefore, what you end up with at the end of a career is
a sort of aggregation of your work which, at the beginning of
your career, probably paid you a reasonably good amount of money
on the one piece if it was a hit or a success or whatever, but,
by the end of your career, it is the totality of that work that
is still earning not vast sums of money, and very, very, very
few successful bands and pop acts that you can think of end up
managing to have a lifetime career of it. You will endlessly see
that so-and-so of The Tremolos is now a tiler or a plumber or
a whatever—
Q110 Mr Hall: What is Brian Poole
doing then?
Mr Ferguson: I have absolutely
no idea, but what I do know is that people who are mates of mine
who were in bands like Blancmange who were very successful in
the 1980s, one of them is a schoolteacher. There is not a lifetime
career in a lot of this for a lot of people. He gets a very small
amount of money on his residuals on stuff that was a big, successful,
multi-national act in the early 1980s. That is the way it works.
Q111 Rosemary McKenna: That is the
problem, is it not, as you see it, that we should not really just
be concentrating solely on the music industry, but it is across
the board? You have one or two very high-profile people who are
hugely successful and behind them you have thousands of others
who are working away, but the consumer sees the front person.
That is the problem that all the creative industries have and
basically it is the most important part of the culture of our
country, all the creative industries, whether it is the performing
arts or the visual arts, and somehow or other that message has
got to be got across to the public in general. I think last week
we heard that at one point you had used Robbie Williams as the
person to promote performing rights and to stop downloading and
then, all of a sudden, you realised, "Wait a minute. Robbie
Williams is a very successful young man, thank you very much",
and that was not a very good idea. Have you come up with any other
ideas? I do agree with what was said earlier on about education
and I think it should be part of enterprise education which is
going on in schools at the moment, but is there anything else,
apart from legislation or reorganising government departments
because I do not think that is going to happen, that you think
that we or business could do to help in that task?
Mr McGonigal: I actually think
we should be celebrating our successes rather than criticising
somebody for earning too much money. I think we should be celebrating—
Q112 Rosemary McKenna: I was not
doing that. What I was saying is that is what people see.
Mr McGonigal: I know, and I think
actually that is where you could all help as opinion-formers,
as people that others listen to.
Q113 Chairman: I seem to recall that
Robbie Williams did not actually help this argument particularly
and he said, "Stuff copyright!" or he may have put it
in even stronger terms than that!
Ms Cave: The point is about focusing
on the extremely famous representatives in each of the creative
sectors, but they are of course in the minority and I think the
more significant message certainly for art students coming up
through art school is that being famous and extremely successful
is a possibility, though a slim one, but there is a whole host
of other careers that you can enjoy through your creativity that
are not necessarily that and you have to understand how your rights
work in order to pursue those careers, commercial illustrators,
photographers, et cetera, and there are myriad examples which
do not necessarily lead you into a fame-and-fortune-type role,
but they certainly do provide you with a living. I think that
does come back to the education point. When I was at art school
there was no professional practice module, but there certainly
is one now and we experience, just like British Music Rights,
a very similar reaction from art educators in colleges and universities
who are crying out for information on how their students can use
their rights to earn them a living not necessarily in the high-profile,
famous way, but in a very useful and meaningful way, working for
newspapers, publishers, freelance, whatever, so there is certainly
some work that could be done there and very valuable, I think.
Ms Carey: I would totally endorse
that. From the Alliance point of view, I would say that we are
looking at doing a bit more research into understanding consumer
activity and motivations and behaviour in which some industry
sectors have already invested quite heavily because I do recognise
the fact that there is a lot of misunderstanding and, as has been
discussed earlier, people seem to think that the digital copyright
is free, but clearly there are a lot of costs. I think that, as
people are going through school, they need to understand that.
I think that a lot of people do aspire to being innovators or
creators in some way and they need to be encouraged. Whether it
is in copyright or trademark areas, do not let us forget that
Britain is also quite successful in some other areas of design
and manufacturing where, even if we do not manufacture or physically
produce the goods, if we do not own the IP, we will not retain
the income from those inventions, those creations which end up
being physical consumer goods, branded manufactured goods. IP
protection needs to extend to those areas as well and they also
fall foul in many instances of infringements online, that new
technologies enable IP theft to take place also in that sphere
and it is not just about copyright. I think that we must not forget,
in our look at new technologies and new challenges for the British
economy, that, where we are talking about copyright industries,
we are also talking about other types of international property
rights which new technology helps and also threatens. Certainly
education right across the board on intellectual property issues,
it would be extremely valuable to help people understand the whole
mechanism and the whole business of how you get your goods or
your ideas to market because money does need to be invested. I
think this is what some copyright infringers just fail to understand
or recognise, that there is money that has to be spent in promoting
a product, in bringing something to market. By saying that stuff
could flow more easily or that consumers would benefit more if
industry was not involved if somehow new technology or the Internet
allowed them free access, it fails to recognise the fact that
people would not know about new bands or would not know about
new films or other creative works if money was not invested in
them to promote them, to make them available not just in a physical
way, but also in a way that people actually get to hear about
them so that they can decide whether they want to go to the cinema
or do that thing, whatever it is, that then produces some income
that goes back to the creator and the producer, so I think this
has to be seen in a holistic way and the core of that is our existing
IP regime.
Mr Ferguson: Also I think some
reinforcement of moral rights also has a serious role to play
in this. Most of the consumers' dislike of copyright is based
on what they see as being poor practice from big record companies,
big film distributors, whatever. There are two things with moral
rights: (a) you put the creator in a stronger bargaining position
vis-a"-vis the big aggregating businesses; and (b) you identify
more closely the author with the consumer, so the chain of value
that is created by the author to the consumer is more identifiable.
Q114 Chairman: We are coming to the
end, though there are a couple more issues that we need to cover
and, before we do, it is only fair that I say to Dominic that
we have heard that collecting societies are going to be more and
more important, but we have also been told that you are monopolistic,
you are exploitative and you are anti-democratic, so how do you
respond to that?
Mr McGonigal: Thank you very much!
I think the first point is right. Yes, I think the collecting
societies will play a more important role going forward. It is
a very efficient licensing system. We have about a quarter of
a million venues around the country, hairdressers, shops, nightclubs,
pubs, all playing music, all paying a licence fee and all that
money going to the artists and the record companies, so it is
a very efficient licensing mechanism within this copyright and
creative industries regime. I think what you have to remember
about us is that we are a business working for artists and record
companies. We are a monopoly because people want us to be a monopoly.
The record companies want one place to go to, the artists want
one place to go to to get their rights licensed, and the users
also want one place to go to to get their licence, so that is
why we are a monopoly. There is nothing malevolent about it; it
is a natural monopoly. In fact, we have done some economic work
on this that shows the benefits, the economic benefits in terms
of efficiencies. In terms of the representation, we are working
for very broad constituencies; we are working for major record
companies, for independent record companies- and we have about
3,500 to 4,000 record companies, and we are working for artists,
session musicians, featured artists, et cetera, right across the
board, currently about 30,000 directly and then others through
our bilateral agreements. We have just recently had some very
good news from the OFT, the Office of Fair Trading, because, after
about five years of work with the performers, we are actually
restructuring PPL to bring performers into the heart of the organisation
as a part of the Board structure and obviously involved in distribution,
finance and all those critical functions, so performers, session
musicians sitting alongside featured artists, alongside independent
record companies and major record companies. The OFT gave us a
clean bill of health on that merger proposal because of the amount
of work that has gone into it and because of the broad support
that we have for that from the performing community and indeed
from the record companies.
Ms Cave: DACS is also a collecting
society and, for the record, we are democratically governed. We
have a balance of artists and independent directors on our Board.
We are owned by the artists that we represent and we work on a
not-for-profit basis, but I would like to say that we are very
supportive of the idea of more regulation of collecting societies
going forward so that standards are set and the increased demand
for transparency and so on is universally met, and we would welcome
that.
Mr Ferguson: We would again broadly
support that, but we would also point out to you conceivably at
the moment that Brussels is getting heavily involved in our collecting
societies. If you ever wanted to see people who do not understand
collecting societies, have a look at what is going on in Brussels.
Q115 Chairman: I think that applies
beyond the collecting societies!
Mr Ferguson: Well, you did not
ask me to expand on that particular one, but they are very alarming,
extremely alarming, because they do not get it and it would be
of enormous help if people here who do understand how collecting
societies work were able to speak up for the collecting societies.
Q116 Adam Price: We heard the MMF
this morning supporting the idea of the levies as a means of compensating
creators, and the witnesses in our first session supported levies.
I do not know about biscuit tins, but, on digital devices and
platforms, do you think this is a good idea?
Ms Cave: It certainly could help
deal with the strange situation that we have in the UK where private
copying is illegal, yet there is no enforcement of that, so I
think the big issue is that the consumer public are very confused
about what they are, and are not, allowed to do. Certainly levies
might help address that problem by legalising a range of private
copying, generating a modest royalty back for the individual creator,
and it would not have a huge impact on consumers because the sums
paid, the charges on machines are very low. However, I should
say that we do not think it resolves the bigger problems. It does
not create some kind of universal licensing regime, but it probably
just tackles that private copying issue.
Mr McGonigal: I think if you had
asked us 10 years ago, absolutely, and 15 years ago in fact the
music industry was asking for levies because we could see no other
way of getting any income from those uses. I think now the opinions
are more divided. There are quite a few in the industry who actually
can see their way through to DRM and technological solutions and
new business models which will actually provide licensing solutions.
I think we are very much at a mid-point at the moment. Most of
us have only had an iPod for a year or two, so what does a private
consumer actually want to do in their house. I think that, if
you wrote a law now that set it in stone, it would be different
in five years' time. We are in a process of evolution where actually
understanding what individual consumers are doing, what they want
to pay for and what they do not want to pay for is actually becoming
clearer. I know that the record companies with the BPI are doing
a lot of work on this right at the moment, so I think we will
see the industry's views in terms of very basic terms and conditions
perhaps, labelling or whatever, that will start to resolve this.
Mr Ferguson: We recognise the
complexity of this issue and we also are fairly sure that no government
is going to be so daft as to introduce a levy which would be perceived
as a tax. That does not mean that the issue should not be looked
at in some way quite seriously because we think it is relatively
likely that, for instance, blank tape or blank CD, whatever it
is, levies will be technologically redundant within 10 years anyway.
Nobody will be copying because that will not be the way that you
consume. The consumer pattern will be completely different in
the sense that you will probably just download whatever your choice
of the day is, and you will subscribe to libraries in effect in
this context. The group that we really would like to see the Government
think about exercising a levy on are the people who actually are
dependent on our creativity to sell their wares, but pay nothing
for it and this is the Internet service providers and the big
telcos. We would also most clearly like to see you intervene forcefully
in stopping lock-out deals between one large corporation and a
telco to the exclusion of other creators. Again this is sort of
scandalous, it is anti-competitive and it is of no advantage to
the consumer if O2 do a deal with Sony BMG and nobody else or
however those things work, so I think those are much more important
issues than levies.
Ms Carey: The Alliance Against
IP Theft does not really have a position on this because it is
more to do with business models, I think. We do not have a consensus.
Some argue in favour of flexibility to create the types of new
licensing arrangements that will reward people for private use
unauthorised, but is it unauthorised or not? If it is not enforced,
it is very hard, but there are other areas of industry who say
that a levy is a tax and, if everybody pays it, then they think
they have the automatic right to take a copy, whereas with DRMs
hopefully, if they are robust, they can allow the creator to decide
how many or to what extent anything is copied. We see these already
in operation with new online services that are now available with
music and film, but they are not completely infallible. I think
it is up to industry to have the freedom to find the solutions
that work for business and for consumers. After all, it is in
the interests of creators to make their works as widely available
as possible to consumers and that is what they are in business
for and it is about having the confidence in whatever system the
industry manages to come up with, that it is flexible, that it
is accessible, and that it can be protected. I think that is the
main point from the Alliance standpoint, that it has to be enforceable
and enforced.
Q117 Chairman: PPL and the CRA, I
believe you have both expressed some concern about the BBC's reliance
on the Creative Archive. Do you just very quickly want to tell
us why you are worried about that?
Mr Ferguson: I do actually attend
the BBC-run Creative Archive Group. Once again, it is a licence
that is not even on the Creative Commons' licence. Creative Commons
is fine if you want to distribute academic work where you have
already been paid for it, but it is not fine in virtually any
other arena; it does not work. What I hope is going to happen
here both with Creative Commons and with the creative archive
is that my parent organisation, as it were, the British Academy
of Composers and Songwriters, is going to be launching a licence
itself later this year which will be called the `fair play licence'
and the fair play licence will do all the things that is intended
as the good of true Creative Commons, ie, specifically allow people
to share work, but also will not break the copyright or enable
the creator to hang on to the copyright in the first place so
that it can be reused in other contexts. We would sincerely hope
that both Creative Commons and the Creative Archive Licensing
Group would have a look at this new model and recognise that,
for certain types of work, this is actually a more effective licence
than the one they are trying to use.
Mr McGonigal: I think the Creative
Archive is actually mixing two completely different things. On
one side, they are talking about releasing the archive of the
BBC, fantastic, make that available, we do not have a problem
with that, but, on the other hand, they are encouraging creativity,
fantastic, again we do not have a problem with that, whether it
is collaborative or individual, but they are mixing the two. They
are implying that to cut and paste something from a natural history
programme into your homework is the same as creating a new work,
but they are two different things and I think that is where the
creative archive has got muddled and we have been urging for a
little bit more clarity as to exactly what it is trying to achieve,
and I would certainly urge that.
Chairman: There are no more questions,
so thank you very much indeed.
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