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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I clearly will withdraw the amendment. For the record, I think that I omitted to declare my interest as chair of Consumer Focus in moving the amendment. I am not sure that either I or the organisation is reassured by the noble Lord’s arguments. No doubt we will return to the issue of communal use, so I will not speak on that. On the basic definition, however, it is clear that the original concept and design of these measures were based on peer-to-peer, and that is what was consulted on by all sides. Extending it to any future new technology or changing use of existing technology seems to me slightly dangerous without some brake on it. I accept that technology moves on, but could that not be met simply by having another clause in the Bill which effectively says that by secondary legislation we can extend this to other forms? Otherwise, quite a lot of old forms of copyright violation could be achieved through electronic means, even though historically they were dealt with by physical means. It is not as if the owners of those rights do not already have the right of redress through the courts. With due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Birt, we are not in the situation that the Swedish rights owners were when they did not have access to the courts until the recent case. Their only recourse was to turn it into a criminal offence. In all forms of copyright violation, the rights holders have the right of redress via the courts. The point about illicit peer-to-peer file-sharing is that that did not appear to be suitable for most instances of this relatively new form of copyright violation. That is why we developed these special measures—which I do not agree with, but nevertheless that is why it happened. To have an open-ended extension to all other forms when there is already one form of redress seems to me quite dangerous. I had hoped that my noble friend’s reply would say that peer-to-peer was too techie for the parliamentary draftsman and therefore he reverted to "old speak" in terms of copyright violation. Unfortunately it was not such a simple explanation; it was a deliberate act of Government to decide to extend this, and that leaves me with a few fears. For the moment, although I may return to the issue—or I may not—and I accept many of his assurances, I think that it is a significant extension of the use of specifically designed remedies for a potentially much wider area. The Committee should rightly be wary of that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 38 withdrawn. Amendments 39 and 40 not moved. Amendment 41 Moved by