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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this amendment is very pertinent, particularly as we are trying to allocate cost sharing as well. It is ridiculous that a UK-based ISP should have to bear 25 per cent of the costs, with no benefit at all, to help to finance the claim of a foreign rights holder, who bears the other 75 per cent. We will be transferring money from UK ISPs to foreign corporations and rights holders, which is not fair. If necessary, we should make allowances for that under the cost-sharing terms. Rights holders must be UK resident, domiciled, tax payers et cetera, in line with various other things. A second point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, arises concerning differences in the terms of copyright. One of the reasons why the Bill will be difficult to enforce is the Berne convention, to which many countries are signed up and under which we all acknowledge and respect different copyrights from other territories. The challenge comes when someone downloads something over here from a server that is physically resident in a different copyright jurisdiction, but one that is a signatory to the Berne convention, and it just so happens that neither the method of downloading nor the material downloaded is unlawful under that jurisdiction’s copyright but it is in the UK. I can see some complicated tangles occurring, but this amendment could sort it out so that at least that level of complication does not arise, thus making one part of the Bill workable. However, I think that it will be quite difficult to make the Bill as a whole work at all.