---

Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is an extremely worthwhile amendment. Copyright at its heart is not a right, it is a compromise. Copyright can be described as a tax or as a monopoly. Neither is a desirable thing to my mind. Copyright is merely what we do—the tough, difficult, bad things we do in order to enable the good thing, which is creativity, to flourish. It is inherently, therefore, a balance between the costs we impose on the innocent enjoyment of good things by members of the public in return for making it possible that such good things can be created. So the idea of balance ought to lie at the heart of our consideration of copyright. In discussing the previous amendment we touched on how we balanced the rights of the individual copyright holder with the rights of the citizen who was faced with a demand which they had no reasonable way of defending. One idea that we did not touch on when discussing the previous amendment—so I cast it before the Minister now as an idea—is that perhaps we should have within this a tariff, a means of establishing the fine which the offender should pay, should they choose to admit their offence. In that way we could establish a reasonable and rational level of cost for the infringer, rather than leaving him at the mercy of the courts and of solicitors who push on the fear factor. As I say, balance should be key to this, so I support this defining amendment as part of the Bill.