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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will in a minute withdraw the amendment, which I did not have any great hope of the Government accepting. There are some principles involved here. The Government have to take on board the fact that the users have no rights under this Bill. If the Government were prepared to engage and alter copyright law, possibly even using Clause 17, which we shall be debating in a minute, to create a fair-use clause in copyright law in this country—such a defence exists, albeit not in an entirely satisfactory form, in United States law—the consumer would clearly have some protection. At the moment, all the rights are on the part of the copyright holder. The obligations are on the ISP, with some protections, and there are no rights for the user. Normally, those rights would have been protected by the courts, but instead we are inventing a new tribunal system, which my noble friend says is judicial. In almost all other circumstances, the court would be used for that process; enforcers go to a court to obtain a sanction for their moves to be imposed. I still do not believe that there is a clear case for having a judicial process separate to what applies in all other forms of copyright law. I accept where the Government are, but essentially the balance in the Bill does not give any rights to the user. As the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said, the Bill does not even indicate how subscribers can protect themselves with what would be regarded as a reasonable defence. The balance is almost entirely on the side of the copyright holder. I am not convinced that this is the right approach, as my noble friend knows. If the Government persist in their approach, they need to explain it better and much more clearly. My noble friend denies that there would be a backlash. Without a more balanced Bill, there will be a backlash. I remind leaders of political parties, so far as they are represented in this House, that in the Swedish elections after the piracy case nearly a quarter of all voters under 25 voted for the Pirate Party. Their votes were completely wasted, but the mainstream parties had alienated those voters. There are bigger social and political issues involved in this than the Government are facing up to. We want to alter behaviour. The aim must be to get the majority of people on to legal systems, but to do that will require time and investment in developing those systems, making them more appropriate and getting rights holders to work through them, rather than resorting to an abnormal method of imposing sanctions. I shall return to this issue at a later stage, perhaps in a more comprehensive way, taking on board some of what my noble friend the Minister said about the Government’s determination to set up a separate tribunal system. At the moment, even with that tribunal system and even accepting what the Minister said about the processes of that system being equivalent to those of a court, I do not think that the balance is right. It would be appropriate to return to this matter at a later stage. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 186 withdrawn. Amendments 187 to 193 not moved. Amendment 194 Moved by