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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

If I heard the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, right, I think that press photographers are going to be used as a trading counter. I should like to speak briefly about them now. It is a logical and legal absurdity to talk of licensing works whose authors cannot be identified while there are still significant groups of authors who do not have the right to be identified. Authors’ rights have a particular problem in the world of journalism. Authors have to take responsibility for their work, which is an exceptionally important matter in the case of journalistic works. The requirement to assert the right is, as has become clear in the Government’s Digital Britain consultation that led to the Bill, confusing and introduces unnecessary complexity. In many cases, a person wanting to know whether they are legally obliged to identify an author would need to track down the original invoice submitted by the author or performer to the publisher or broadcaster. It is unnecessary and should be removed in the interests of clarity and legal certainty. The exception to the right to be identified as the author of a journalistic work was introduced to the 1988 Act at the last minute and in the days of hot metal typesetting. Then, publishers perhaps had cause to fear that the slug of metal bearing the photo credit or article by-line would fall on the floor and be kicked under the compositor’s stone. Current technology makes identification easy—in fact, in the best design cases, it is entirely automatic—and the proposal on orphan works makes it imperative. Lest newspaper editors should have cause to be worried about this constraining normal editing, the bar is set high enough by the requirement that the author shows that an alternation amounts to distortion or mutilation of the work or is otherwise prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director. I beg to move.