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Creative Industries

I half agree with my hon. Friend. I think he is correct when he talks about physical product. There is a lot of evidence that the manufacture of counterfeit DVDs and CDs is being conducted by organised crime and feeds the misery that he has described. The problem with online illegal distribution is that it is free. That is why everyone does it; they get access to the material and pay nothing, so there is not any great financial motive. A famous instance is The Pirate Bay, which I think was created by two Swedish teenagers; and they did it because it was fun. They did not believe in copyright, and they had the technology, so they sat in their bedroom and created The Pirate Bay. As a result, peer-to-peer file sharing is now taking place across the world. The two people in question deny responsibility and say that all they did was to create the access mechanisms. That is not so much organised crime, and in some ways it represents a bigger challenge. There are things that the Government can do besides improving education, which is vital, and encouraging the industry to adapt its practices. Some of those actions, which I welcome, are set out in the White Paper. However, I hope that the Government will not consider hardware levies. I have not seen evidence that they are being considered by the Government, but there are some in the industry who are now talking about them, and of course they exist in one or two European countries. It seems to me that a tax on blank discs or iPods is not the way forward: it would clearly be unpopular, and it would be very difficult to work out how the proceeds of such a levy would be distributed back to the owners of rights, as some have suggested. A small measure that could be taken, which the Select Committee recommended, and which might make a difference, concerns access to pirated films, which sometimes appear within hours of a film's release. Quite a lot of it is done by people sitting in cinemas with camcorders. When people go to the cinema they see all sorts of dire warnings on the screen about being expelled and subsequently banned from the cinema, prosecuted and fined; but the truth is that such filming is not a criminal offence. It is a civil offence. The industry has suggested that making it a criminal offence would send a strong signal, and the Select Committee supported that. The most important element, as the Minister rightly mentioned, is to encourage the ISPs to accept that they must get involved and that they have a responsibility. For a long time, ISPs seemed to be saying, ““We are no more than telecoms companies. We supply the copper down which data flow, but in the same way that British Telecom cannot be held accountable for what people say in telephone conversations, we cannot be held accountable for how people use our delivery mechanisms.”” That is now changing, and the Government are right to express the hope that a self-regulatory system can be created. This morning, while the hon. Member for Bath was meeting the Internet Service Providers Association, I was meeting Yahoo! I was told that the discussions between the Music Publishers Association and the ISPs are very productive. There is a general willingness to accept that where the rights holder identifies a particular IP address as the source of a lot of material that is being uploaded, they can notify the ISP, which will identify which computer, if not which user, is responsible and serve a notice of warning that if the activity continues, they will be taken down. That is a real step forward and represents a change of attitude in the industry. I hope that others will join that move—for example, I think there is a role for search engines to play in trying to make it far harder for people to find out how to access illegal material. We can be optimistic about such measures being introduced. I am told that in America the ISPs are discovering that the amount of video content that is being distributed is taking up a vast amount of bandwidth and slowing down the whole system. They know that the majority of that activity is illegal. Tackling the problem is therefore becoming something that is in the ISPs' interests. That may explain why they have suddenly become rather more enthusiastic about doing so. I will finish on the issue of copyright extension, which was raised by the hon. Member for Bath and will no doubt be mentioned by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). There has been a long-standing campaign by the music industry, which points to the fact that composers, lyricists and designers all enjoy copyright on CDs until 70 years after their deaths, whereas the producers and performers have only a 50-year term. That is unfair. The Gowers report suggested that the extension of copyright term might not produce much economic benefit. That has been questioned by the industry, as I mentioned earlier, but, at the end of the day, that does not seem to me to be the point at all. It is not about whether extension will generate more economic activity, but about morals and rights. Why should somebody who creates a work be allowed to benefit from it for only 50 years? Other countries across the world have far longer terms. The case for moving in that direction is very strong. I cannot resist reading a letter that I received last year—one of the most exciting letters that I have received for a long time. It came from Mr. Eddie Clarke, also known as Fast Eddie, the lead guitarist of Motörhead. I must admit that I have seen them perform on several occasions. He wrote:"““You may think that as a rock musician I should not expect to live until 80. I can assure you I did not think this was going to happen but with modern technology and medicine, it certainly seems a possibility—even my old partner in crime Lemmy might make it.""My royalties will be my pension and something to pass on to my family, so to learn that they will be stripped away before my 80th birthday is frankly unacceptable.””" I think that Fast Eddie speaks for a huge number of performers in the industry. It was for that reason that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee recommended an extension of the copyright term. We were extremely disappointed that the Government did not respond positively to that suggestion. However, things have since changed. Suddenly, out of the blue, Commissioner McCreevy saw the light and issued a statement that bears a remarkable resemblance to the wording of the Select Committee report. That may not be entirely coincidental, but the fact that the European Commission has accepted that there is a strong case for copyright term extension will, I hope, cause the Government to think again. I welcome the Minister's comment to me at question time a few days ago when she said that she had an open mind. However, like those who have already contributed today, I hope that her open mind will allow her to reconsider the matter soon and to reach a firm decision. An indication that she is becoming more sympathetic to our case—I am sure that other hon. Members will express support for it—would be a welcome and major contribution to supporting the creative industries.