Yesterday we covered an open letter from 25+ Liberal Democrat prospective Parliamentary candidates (and see also this comment from ex-MP Richard Allan), expressing concerns over the line the party had taken in the House of Lords on a key part of the Digital Economy Bill. The party’s DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) team has now replied in turn with another public letter.
Two things to note when reading it. First, this sort of public exchange of letters is unusual, but very welcome. Although journalists sometimes struggle with the concept of a party that debates policy openly and has a democratic policy-making process, that’s a key part of the party’s approach.
Second, reading between the lines there is a very big olive branch being offered and the opportunity for a dialogue rather than warfare. Phrases in the letter such as “the Liberal Democrats believe passionately in the neutrality of the web” suggest a significant degree of common ground on both sides of this debate, as does the agreement on all sides that the Government’s original proposals were wrong.
So here’s the letter:
Thank you very much for your letter concerning an amendment passed in the House of Lords to the Digital Economy Bill on the issue of site blocking on the internet.
We hope the following will both explain the background, why some of the concerns that have been expressed are unfounded but also the steps that are being taken to resolve any outstanding issues.
The amendment was tabled to replace Clause 17 which gave the Secretary of State excessive powers to amend copyright law at will in the future with limited scrutiny from Parliament. Our efforts ensured that Clause 17 was successfully deleted from the Bill on Wednesday 3 March.
Conscious, however, that around 35% of all online copyright infringement takes place on non peer-to-peer sites and services we also sought to address this issue. To some extent there is existing legislation regarding site blocking; for example, numerous ticket touting websites were closed by police action in recent months. While further improvements no doubt can be made, our intention was to improve such existing legislation.
Amendment 120A enables the High Court to grant an injunction requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that persist in publishing a substantial amount of copyrighted material despite repeated requests to remove it.
The Liberal Democrats believe passionately in the neutrality of the web; neutrality as far as free speech is concerned and neutrality as far as independence from government is concerned. Indeed, dating back to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act the Liberal Democrats have been committed to ensuring the maximum possible freedom on the internet. That remains our position. And we are instinctively loath to give the government any increased power in this area. But we can’t be neutral about illegality. Just as we would all want to prevent shops from selling stolen or counterfeit goods, so too we should want to prevent it happening on the internet.
As it stands, the amendment ensures that an injunction would only be permissible in the following circumstances:
1. Where a site is hosting a substantial amount of copyright material
Sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Google have such an enormous volume of material it would be impossible for a “substantial proportion” of their content to infringe copyright at any one time.
AND
2. Where the site operator has been contacted a number of times and asked to remove the copyright content but has failed to do so
Amendment 120A includes the condition that if reasonable steps have been taken to prevent access to copyright content an injunction would not be permissible. YouTube, for example, has a very good record of checking and removing content that infringes copyright.
AND
3. Where the copyright holder has made a reasonable effort to ensure that there are legal ways of accessing the content online
The amendment is designed to encourage copyright owners to develop innovative new ways for their material to be accessed legally online, such as Spotify. The intention is to discourage legal action from being the first port of call.
AND
4. Where human rights implications, such as the right to freedom of expression, have been taken into consideration by the Court
No injunction would be permitted unless all these conditions were met.
In other words, the amendment is designed to pick up sites that persistently host substantial amounts of copyright content despite being asked repeatedly to take the material down. The business of many of these sites is based on the publication of copyright material but, as they are not based in the UK, existing British law does not apply to them.
Some concerns which have been raised about the amendment include:
1. YouTube or Google (or similar sites) would be blocked –
This clearly couldn’t happen (see points 1 & 2 above)
2. Site operators won’t be notified of an injunction application –
An injunction is not permissible unless the site operator has already been contacted and asked to remove illegal material, and refused to do so (see point 2). So concerns that site operators would not know of the threat are unjustified.
3. Sites like blogs that host other people’s comments might publish illegal material inadvertently and therefore be targeted by ISPs –
For a website to be threatened with an injunction, the illegal content would have to form a “substantial” part of all the material on the website (see point 1) AND the site operators would need to have refused repeatedly to remove the content.
4. Cyberlocking sites which are used to publish copyright content could be blocked –
The same conditions about “substantial” amount of copyright material and repeated refusals to remove or block copyright content would apply to cyberlocking sites as to any others (see points 1 & 2 above).
However, we acknowledge that with the shortness of time available and need to work with other parties to defeat the Government and remove Clause 17, it may be that the wording agreed at this stage can no doubt be improved. And opportunities exist to achieve this.
Liberal Democrats will continue to seek to do all we can to ensure that the rights and freedoms of internet users are protected to the maximum possible extent. The team from both Houses have invited some leading bloggers and the Open Rights Group as well as representatives from key members of the industry to a round table to work out how we can best make this happen.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us on this important issue.
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45 Comments
Glad to see they are open to changing the wording, but we cannot let the pressure subside.
The amendment as it stands is a pig. There are so many weasel clauses in the amendment. What is the definition of “substantial proportion”?
Kate said:
“What is the definition of “substantial proportion”?”
I also wonder how a site would go about proving the proportions involved. Would they need to release details of _all_ the content they hold? That can’t be a good thing.
“An injunction is not permissible unless the site operator has already been contacted and asked to remove illegal material, and refused to do so (see point 2). So concerns that site operators would not know of the threat are unjustified.”
Again, this is not what the amendment appears to say. It appears to say two things relating to site operators. First, in (2)(b) it says the court shall have regard to whether the site operator has taken reasonable steps to prevent copyright infringement. It says nothing that requires them to be told. As the wording stands, if the site operator has not taken reasonable steps, then that may become a supporting condition for an injunction – whether or not they had been informed.
Secondly, sub-clause (3) says that the application for the injunction must be notified to the site operator. In other words, when law has already been resorted to. That is not carrot then stick – there’s no carrot there at all. The law is, we were told by Don Foster, supposed to be a last resort.
As the wording stands, I can see no reason why the first thing a site operator could hear of a problem is notice that an injunction is being sought on them. This does not seem to be fair and much of your subsequent argument hinges on its being fair.
“No injunction would be permitted unless all these conditions were met.”
Again, that is not what the amendment says. It says the court shall have regard to matters including amount of material, action of service provider etc. And amonst these matters, the court should have regard to “any other matters which appear to the Court to be relevant”, so it is quite clear we are not talking about a list of concrete conditions which must be met.
“Sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Google have such an enormous volume of material it would be impossible for a “substantial proportion” of their content to infringe copyright at any one time.”
This depends on whether absolute volume could be taken into account when assessing substantial proportion. Absent a definition of this term in the act (which I can’t see in the amendment but it may be defined elsewhere) this is a pretty vague – and vagueness in a draconian power is not a good thing. Why not define a threshold below which cannot be regarded as a substantial proportion.
“4. Where human rights implications, such as the right to freedom of expression, have been taken into consideration by the Court”
As I’ve said elsewhere this is a meaninless clause as the courts would have to take Human Rights implications into consideration regardless of what this act said. Its also a disingenuous statement as the relevant clause also makes reference to
“For a website to be threatened with an injunction, the illegal content would have to form a “substantial” part of all the material on the website (see point 1) AND the site operators would need to have refused repeatedly to remove the content.”
If that is to be the “new regime” what problem is it addressing. Is it currently the case that copyright holders can’t get an injunction against a site hosting a substantial proportion (for arguments sake over 33%) of illegal content and have repeatedly refused to remove it? That doesn’t sound like the hardest case to make for an on notice injuntion.
Furthermore, the proposal doesn’t specify how long a site is to be blocked, nor what procedure, if any, exists to unblock it.
I am concerned that elsewhere, the Lords who proposed this bill characterised copyright infringement as a simple, clear-cut matter to adjudicate. Nothing could be farther from the truth: copyright claims are notorious *difficult* to adjudicate. This proposal and the supplementary material does not state how a court is meant to determine whether “a substantial proportion” of the material on a web-locker infringes; will the people who put the allegedly infringing material in the locker (presumably from all over the world) be given an opportunity to plead that their use is lawful? (I also share the concern that “substantial” has not been defined — a concern compounded by previous corporate rightholder arguments that 1% (Napster) is substantial, see also Viacom’s claims against YouTube).
Then there is the matter of all the material that *doesn’t* infringe that is hosted on a blocked site. If I back up my files on a web-locker that is then blocked by a court because some *other* person has allegedly used it to infringe upon copyright, what about my right to access my own content? Declaring war on cloud computing is a dumb and unfair idea on its face.
Finally, I am very concerned that the explanation above contains extremely misleading comparisons of this proposal to existing legislation. Where you write “there is existing legislation regarding site blocking; for example, numerous ticket touting websites were closed by police action in recent months,” you make such a misleading comparison. Shutting down a touting site (by ordering an ISP to remove unlawful content) is not even in the same universe as erecting a national firewall and using it to block *all* the files hosted on a server, whether or not they infringe upon copyright.
Likewise, the comparisons to the child-porn filter (which has been recently criticised for blocking non-pornographic material) are misleading. That filter is voluntary for ISPs. No court has ordered ISPs to block it.
When the child-porn filter was first proposed, many of us said that it was a slippery slope: establishing the idea that ISPs should be responsible for shutting off parts of the internet that contained objectionable material would lead inevitably to calls to extend this blocking to other kinds of material, such as copyright infringement.
And here are the LibDem Lords, proposing that the child-porn filter system be expanded, made mandatory, and extended to copyright infringement, while assuring us that this won’t be expanded again to cover libel, or trade secrets, or patent infringement, or trademark claims, or treasonous statements, or blasphemy, or any other class of bad speech that someone, somewhere wants to see suppressed.
I don’t see any reason to believe that expanding national filtering won’t lead to further expansion. Indeed, the fact that the LibDem Lords cite the existing filters as justification for their proposal is evidence that the next censor that comes along will do the same with the LibDems’ censorwall.
A vendor selling a copy or imitation that is misrepresented as the genuine article is committing a falsehood, a deceit. This has been recognised as something that should be prohibited since time immemorial.
However, a vendor selling a copy or imitation that is honestly represented as a copy, derivative, or imitation of another work is committing no falsehood or deceit. This has also been recognised as something perfectly natural and to be embraced since time immemorial. Man has progressed precisely through a process of sharing knowledge, copying songs, stories, tools and techniques and improving them.
The unnatural law that was introduced in 1710 by Queen Anne was the privilege of a reproduction monopoly granted to printers of literary works, and this at a stroke suspended the public’s right to make copies – a natural right that they had enjoyed as part of their natural liberty since time immemorial.
So, what happens when the public find themselves in possession of ever more powerful reproduction technology? They are in fundamental conflict with those in possession of the privilege that suspends their liberty.
To say that because the 18th century privilege privilege is still law three centuries later, that it is therefore right and the people who are in the wrong is to blind yourself to the reality of the conflict, and the nature of people and information.
The Digital Economy Bill is simply yet another attempt to provide the privileged with additional legal sanctions, to effectively give King Canute yet more extreme powers to hold back the incorrigibly disobedient tide.
The Internet is essentially a system for instantaneously diffusing (distributing & reproducing) digital, intellectual works. A transferable 18th century privilege that requires that no-one distributes or reproduces an intellectual work without permission from the holder of that privilege is at best an anachronism, and at worst an unethical statute that should never have been enacted.
This writing is on the wall. If you don’t hesitate to copy it and freely distribute it among your peers you are not respecting the privilege and law that suspends your liberty to do so, but committing yourself into ignorance and cultural suicide.
“I also share the concern that “substantial” has not been defined — a concern compounded by previous corporate rightholder arguments that 1% (Napster) is substantial, see also Viacom’s claims against YouTube”
Cory – has that position on substantial been upheld by any US courts? There is of course a vast difference between arguments made in front of a court and ones that are upheld 🙂
This bit in my post above
“As I’ve said elsewhere this is a meaninless clause as the courts would have to take Human Rights implications into consideration regardless of what this act said. Its also a disingenuous statement as the relevant clause also makes reference to”
Should go on to say “the right to property – so what it is asking the courts to do is balance the two. Not, as implied by this letter have especial regard to freedom of expression.”
“Has that position on substantial been upheld by any US courts?”
Yes. The judge in Napster ordered the company to put up a copyright filter that would block infringing downloads. By the RIAA’s account this filter was *99%* effective. The RIAA subsequently argued (successfully) that Napster was in violation of the injunction to block infringement because its filter failed 1% of the time.
On a different tack, the Supreme Court in Grokster found that the presence of literally *millions* of non-infringing files on P2P networks (so many that the MPAA’s own experts stated that they couldn’t avoid downloading non-infringing material while they were researching the case) wasn’t material to the “proportionality” test. They ordered Grokster shut, and those millions of lawful files taken offline with it.
“Weblocker” sites are private: you can send a file to someone which requires a special code (usually sent to the recipient by email from the site) to download it. How, then, would a rights-holder know that the site was being used to transfer infringing material? It would have to be done by packet-sniffing or by demanding access to the site to analyse its content – ie by infringing privacy.
These sites are used to send large files, and large files often means video. The Australian TV network I do projects with uses it to send us rough cuts and hi-res reference copies of our programming. My wife uses sites like this to receive home videos from her daughter and her family in Canada. All these are legal uses.
An internet broadcaster licensed under the PRS Limited Online Exploitation Licence and Phonographic Performance Limited’s Webcasting Licence is permitted by the latter to centralise music storage in a single library that can be shared between station staff – who may be in different geographical locations – and pays a “Dubbing Fee” to do so. This is a legal use, and there’s no reason why a cloud-based service like DropBox couldn’t be used for this purpose.
How is anyone in authority going to tell – especially in the latter case – whether the media files they sniff are legally transferred or not? Can you imagine that the appropriate enforcers will get the information from the ISP about what the files are, identify them as copyright material, correlate that with the email addresses or IP addresses of the participants, identify the individuals involved with that transfer, and then go along to Phonographic Performance Limited and see if they have a Webcasting licence that includes payment of the Dubbing Fee to legally copy the files to a shared library? Sure, I can really imagine this happening, can’t you?
The whole concept is quite unimaginable, and if it was imaginable it would represent a whole string of gross invasions of privacy.
You simply cannot maintain Internet privacy and satisfy the current requirements of many traditional rights-holders. It’s one or the other.
The fact is that the old ways the media moguls have operated for a century are no longer valid. The new ways will not go away. Illegal filesharers will not go away: they will use simple proxies – easy for them but not within the scope of the average person who wants to transfer a home video to their family. Legal content creators will have their workflows disrupted too.
Everything will become more complicated to suit old industries who refuse to adopt new business models and want the world’s governments to help them maintain control that has already left their hands. Instead of saying “How can we stop people doing this?” and making their customers the enemy, they should be asking “How do we make money by giving our customers what they want?” We should be encouraging that shift with policies that encourage new creative strategies in the burgeoning digital economy.
The future of Digital Britain depends on encouraging creation and co-creation. It’s no longer about a small number of publishers who put out the work of a few lucky creators. Today, creation and co-creation is for everyone, and for creators to share directly with their audiences without going through middlemen. People can create music, video and other creative works by collaborating across the country and across the world, then sell or share that through digital outlets on a global basis. They need to be able to do this freely and easily. Ordinary people need to be able to share their home videos with their families without fear of having their private materials peered into and their privacy violated.
Trying to lock up the Internet at the behest of former media moguls is not the way to a free society. We have traditionally been a party supporting individual freedoms, and helping to build the Great Firewall of Britain is the very antithesis of what we should be doing.
It seems to me that we should not be following the Tories, who are evidently influenced by Rupert Murdoch; or the Labour Party who have evidently had too many drinks on the yachts of record company big-wigs. The media moguls are not on our side. They are not on the side of the people of Britain. They are not going to help us build a new digital economy: they are intent on strangling it.
It’s not quite a perfect analogy, but I seem to recall that the then-Labour government’s decision to close down the vastly popular offshore radio stations in 1967 led to a significant loss of Labour votes – and even seats – in the East of England in the 1970 election. The stations weren’t illegal: they were made illegal. The government completely misunderstood the popularity of these stations and the service they provided.
Today, we stand to lose a great deal too, by failing to understand the nature of the digital revolution and by failing to develop advanced, progressive policies in this area. Why we don’t have Cory Doctorow on board as a consultant in this area I can’t imagine. We don’t even seem to have a properly formulated IT policy, let alone a concerted, integrated on the entire IT/IP field (if someone is putting this together then post a link and I’ll sign up to help).
We need to do much better than this. If we do this right, we have a great opportunity. If we do not, we lose, and the people of Britain lose too.
I’m curious about section 3:
Are you suggesting that a copyright owner would be prohibited from requesting this injunction unless the said material was already available online – Cory has already commented on the vagueness of the word “reasonable” when applied to this sort of undertaking. I too feel that there’s no objective standard of what counts as “reasonable” online distribution.
It occurs to me that this well-intentioned clause might be utterly toothless since all that matters is that the copyright owner made a reasonable effort, rather than a successful effort!
I’ve posted a blog with my own suggested for amending the Digital Economy bill instead or Lord Razzle & Clement-Jones amendment 120a http://liberalprovocateur.vox.com/library/post/an-alternative-to-the-two-tims-amendment-to-the-de-bill.html
Who’s invited to this round table? Cory? Bridget F? Suggest we should collate our legal and our general objections asap, as well as alternative wording suggestions.
“Cory has already commented on the vagueness of the word “reasonable” when applied to this sort of undertaking. I too feel that there’s no objective standard of what counts as “reasonable” online distribution.”
It sounds a bit vague I’lll admit but the concept of reasonable steps/actions is well understood in legal terms. In the absence of any firm definition in the bill the assumption would be Parliament would want it to be interpreted in the way it usually is.
@Cory – Thanks. I’m not sure that is the same as measuring a substantial proportion though. Did the court order everything illegal to be blocked? If so a 99% success rate isn’t compliance. If the court ordered “resonable steps to block a substantial proportion” then it might be analagous.
This policy is that it appears to have arisen fully-formed, out of the blue.
There’s no evidence of prior consultation with bodies such as OpenRightsGroup – I’m glad that the party sees fit to consult with digital rights groups, however it would have been nice if this were done before the policy had been proposed in the House of Lords.
I think everybody should acknowledge that some damage has been done. Until recently the LibDem party has had an immaculate reputation amongst people who care about digital rights. Now thanks to negative coverage on Slashdot and the usual outraged feedback via twitter people may be forgiven for thinking that the LibDems are as cynical and opportunistic on digital rights as the Tories.
My big worry is that unless we can find a platform which resonances with people who care about digital rights it will propel liberal-minded people towards the single-issue UK Pirate Party.
The a priori assumption “but we can’t be neutral about illegality” begs the question. Questions that must be answered before any of this sort of legislation is tabled.
Are we to stop airlines selling tickets to Moscow because someone might buy a Russion style copyrighted song there and bring it back on their iPod?
I see no reason why rights holders should not have to do what they have had to do in the recent past – deal with the copyright abusers in Russia or wherever, rather than be allowed to insist on a UK firewall to do their work for them.
Nope – I thikn I understand their reasoning behind the amendment, and I can probably acept that it is well meant, and certainly accept that it is better than making the Secretary of State the new Lord Chamberlain’s office, but since the whole bill is based on fundamentally flawed premises, it’s like, what was that memorable phrase from the US election, “putting lipstick on a pig”?
There is NO definition of the word “substantial” that would actually work in practice.
Does this law give a court sufficient powers to check every one of millions of files stored on a foreign website, and sufficient resources to check them for both copyright infringement and lack of licenses? Bear in mind that there is no worldwide register of copyrighted works, no worldwide register of licences. Copyright laws may vary between this country, the country where the weblocker is based, the countries where the files were put onto the web locker, and the countries where the files are downloaded. Also bear in mind that it is trivially easy for users to encrypt files, and many do so as a matter of course. Will this law create a process for forcing foreign nationals to reveal passwords to files stored in their own country? If not, it’s unworkable.
The requirement to contact the site operator needs to be clearly defined, otherwise a loophole will exist for sites out of the jurisdiction of the UK courts, or where the operator is untraceable, or even deceased.
If a percentage is set, then site owners can simply pad out their site with sufficient junk to be exempt, rendering the law toothless. If it’s not set, then we are at the mercy of case law, and nobody knows where they stand.
If Youtube, Facebook and Google are indeed exempt, as claimed, obviously they will be used as a safe havens, rendering the law toothless. File sharers will simply swap passwords for encrypted files stored on these sites that are for some inexplicable reason ‘big enough to be above the law’.
The biggest problem with the word substantial is that it sets a fundamentally flawed precedent, the ridiculous idea that copyright infringement is ‘ok if you don’t do too much of it’, allowing some of it but not more than some simply isn’t logical, or sensible. Would the Lib Dems legalise bank robbery in cases where the thieves only ask for a sum of money that is not ‘substantial’?.
Either not for profit copyright infringement is morally wrong and must be punished, or it’s morally right, and must be legalised. The public will not support, understand or obey a law that creates a grey area where something is ‘a bit illegal, but ok if you don’t do more than a substantial amount of it.’, especially where the word ‘substantial’ is not and cannot conceivably be clearly defined.
Andrew, ‘for profit’ vs ‘not for profit’ is also a very grey area, so really you should decide whether copyright is itself a law that should or should not remain enacted, not whether some infringements are good or bad. There are no moral issues concerning copyright. It is a privilege that was granted solely out of commercial and state interest (irrespective of platitudes and pretexts). Moral rights are natural and a separate matter entirely.
I’ve heard Evan Haris MP make this exact same point (but on drug regulation matters) – I presume that the principle is understood by our parliamentarians. I just wish they would be seen to act according to their (our) beliefs! That seems to be the tragedy of this whole affair. It’s all so out-of character and off-consensus with the party.
Sal
Agree: I’ve seen decisions where the mere inclusion of adwords-banners on the site means that it is considered “for profit” – by that criteria LDV is a “for profit” site.
Reasons to be cheerful – the Parliamentarians understand there is an issue, and are going to sit down with the people who understand what the issue is. Cory, I understand, will be there.
I got a phone call from the Leader’s office thanking me for the PPCs letter. In another party it could have been a phone thrown at me….
LibDems may not have got it right first time on this, but I believe our peers were sincerely trying, as ever, to improve bad Labour legislation. That there are more improvements urgently to be made, or indeed that the whole thing might better be junked and start again, is at the Government’s door.
We can continue to bemoan the status quo (and I’ll defend to the death your right to do so :-)) or we can work to improve it. I’m proud that our party not only welcomes constructive criticism but also acts on it. In my experience, the more constructive the criticism, the more productive of action.
Let’s give credit to the Lib Dem peers for being Lords alistening and keep positive pressure on to move this dire legislation in the right direction. And let’s not waste any opportunity to vote out Labour who introduced it in the first place, even if Lib Dems seem less shiny to you than we used to.
Bridget, most people here are sympathetic and understanding to the way this has all turned out. So I don’t think the issue is a matter of reassuring members, or readers of this site. It is an issue of undoing SEVERE DAMAGE to the credibility of the Lib Dems in the eyes of the public. A public that had assumed the Lib Dems (of all parties) would be the last party to put the commercial interests of immortal publishing corporations over and above the cultural liberty of human beings.
What does the Metro have to say today?
http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/816047-new-law-could-put-block-on-youtube
CONCLUSION: Liberal Democrats are the servants of the copyright cartel, who will not hesitate to draft draconian bills and amendments in their favour.
That is the conclusion that must be undone, the damage that must be limited.
What could be discussed on LDV is how the heck the Lib Dems can hope to do so.
Briget, I am sure that the party receives more criticism than it can handle.
So, perhaps it would be better to say “it acts on some criticism”.
I have been critical about the Lib Dem approach to banking (as people probably know) but do not necessarily expect action in the short term
Bridget, that’s good news that there may well be some shift in the position. We are, and must always be, a party that challenges the consensus view, and with this bill we were definitely being sucked into the industry consensus that “something must be done, even if we don’t understand what”.
…and I hope we never do…:) We want a genuinely liberal shift in banking!
@Crosbie
Yes, this is the problem. And the iron is that digital rights are an issue of profound concern to LD voters but almost of no concern at all to typical Labor and Tory voters. I cannot think what the party had hoped to gain by endorsing this policy.
I think the question ought to be how do we fix this: Step one is obviously to fix the policy. This is where we need the help of serious digital rights campaigners like the Open Rights Group. Secondly, how do we let the UK digital-rights community know that the LibDems have self-corrected and that sanity has been restored. This is where the bloggers come in.
Good to see Bridget Fox asking for constructive suggestions on twitter, I hope nobody minds the leader of another party chipping in here…
I’d like to suggest some positive amendments that could be made to the Digital Economy Bill, not ones that would move the Lid Dem position very far towards that of the Pirate Party, but ones that would be a step in the right direction.
1. Take a look at common carrier status. This is the law that currently absolves BT from responsibility for threatening phone calls made over their network. The principle of a defence of ‘we just provide infrastructure, the content is up to the users’ is an important one that needs to be introduced into the bill. It’s a proven working solution in the telecoms industry already, applying it here would solve current the issue of wifi hotspots becoming effectively illegal under the bill.
2. Introduce a fair use defence. Even the horribly draconian American copyright law has exceptions, but we currently do not have anything substantial and understood by consumers. If the bill gave back some of what it takes away, people would be less angry. Give us a legal right to format shift as a start (even the industry lobbyists admit we should have a right to buy a CD and put it onto our iPods).
3. Look into Lord Clement Jones’s funding. If he does indeed take £70k a year from an organisation in the employ of an RIAA sock-puppet, as has been alleged by at least one other poster in this thread, then do something about it, quickly, otherwise other parties (including mine) will make a lot of political capital out of what looks very much like corruption.
4. If we have to have a Digital Economy Bill, at least put some good stuff into it! Go talk to (and more importantly, listen to) photographers and museums. Give them what they want on orphan works, academic usage, and the right to photograph without harassment under terrorism laws. In return, take away the part of copyright law that is stopping the National Portrait Gallery sharing it’s paintings because the photographer has copyright in simple reproductions of out-of-copyright works.
5. Set sensible maximum fines for file sharing. £50,000 for offering to share a file that costs 79p isn’t going to go down well with the public.
6. Drop the word ‘substantial’ in amendment 120A, and have a clear, understandable definition, if you can. At the same time, fix the other use of the word in the copyright designs and patents act 1988, which defines how much musicians can sample each other’s work. The current mess, where everyone is too scared of losing to create any case law and whoever has the scariest legal team wins, benefits only the biggest content monopolies.
7. Give ‘mash-ups’ a clearly defined legal status.
8. Give us some sort of right to access withheld works (ones that were commerically available, but have been withdrawn from sale, or that were only given away for promotional use. It’s hard to make a case for locking up these works until the january the 1st after 70 years after the last person involved in their making dies, so why not give the public access to them?
Well done Lib Dem Leadership; what a great way to alienate over 1,000,000.00 voters.
Frankly, I don’t have a lot of trouble with Andrew Robinson’s proposals here. They also encompass issues that our overall policy should certainly address.
If we’re going to be frank about Andrew Robinson, then I’d suggest his talents are wasted in his current position and he should be snapped up by the Lib Dems.
Can the Lib Dems and Pirates stand joint candidates, like the Labour and Co-operative parties?
I for one would like to see Bridget Fox elected as the first Liberal Democrat and Pirate MP.
As I follow the debate in Australia over mandatory Internet filtering, I hope that the legislation never reaches their statute books. I hope that, not because I think it would hurt the UK, but because I think it would hurt the citizens of Australia. If the UK starts shutting itself off from the rest of the Internet solely over the issue of copyright, it’ll be us who suffer the nett loss.
It’s obvious that sites like YouTube, Facebook and Google would never be blocked. Blocking any one of them would result in the collective outcry of several million people. But, will the High Court really protect sites like Wikileaks and Cryptome on human rights grounds alone?
Indeed Charles – you remind me of something I was going to suggest earlier, that if this unwelcome amendment it to carry on, it should also contain a defence of “public interest” (such as was, I think, used in the recent Cryptome/Microsoft case).
Crosbie Fitch… when’s the transfer window open? You’d have to sweeten the deal too… swapsies for Doctorow?
Seriously though, re your earlier point that ‘for profit’ vs ‘not for profit’ is also very gray area, I agree, but it’s a gray area where clear-cut rules can (and indeed should) we written. A personal bugbear of mine is that Nominet (the self-appointed people who lease, but refuse to sell UK domain names and took over the lucrative job by pretty much ‘right of conquest’) claim to be ‘not for profit’ but have £15m in the bank, pay themselves salaries that would make an MP blush, and refuse to lower their prices. If the bill is going to include Ofcom regulating yet more things, then I think they should be a prime target.
Anyway, enough of my personal rants, back to the bill… One big thing that needs to be done is to actually write the missing ‘code’ that contains all the specific details that are strangely missing from the face of the bill. Lords on all sides have pointed this out as a major failing, so it wouldn’t be at all controversial to ask for it.
If the LibDems were looking for a way to stall the bill in it’s current ‘rushed through’ form, and have time for a rethink, then asking for the code to be finalised, and for the BIS/BERR to have their usual 12 week public consultation on it, and/or the new and very different clause 17 and/or the addition of disconnection to the bill by Lord Mandelson, might be a very wise way to do it.
Should the LibDems be looking for a way to stall the bill? Strategically I’d say yes, taking the blame for the new clause 17 will be a lot more damaging to the party if it passes than if it fails due to time constraints, so this could be a very useful damage limitation exercise. While personally I think the Conservatives are likely to win the next election and write their own, even worse replacement bill, the LibDems would be able to both blame them for it, and to use their presumably more decisive weight to propose more considered and popular amendments. This is of course especially true if we get a hung parliament.
This bit already happened, and a series of consultation reports were produced that listed a whole bunch of important and useful copyright reforms. The government, acting on the instructions of the media industry, ignored them all.
This is unfortunate. It’s the result of a sadly common form of blinkered vision in regards to how the Lib Dems work. Since Labour and the Tories work on the basis of policy being handed down from the leadership, and that policy being the gospel which all party members endorse, everybody has this habit of assuming the Lib Dems work the same way – which is not even close to true. What we have here is a couple of peers who made a good faith effort to improve one aspect of the Bill, without attempting to fix all the issues. Their amendment was never representative of the party, and was always open to further improvements, but the media and the public have got this idea in their head that it must represent the final position of the whole party.
I’m not sure what can be done about this. The fact that the Lib Dems are internally democratic makes it impossible for the first published anything to be representative of the party. We see this behaviour from the media all the time: a proposal is made, to start a discussion inside the party, and they all run stories as if it was a finished policy. We cannot, and should not, keep the discussions secret. What else can we do?
Andrew Suffield said: “We see this behaviour from the media all the time: a proposal is made, to start a discussion inside the party, and they all run stories as if it was a finished policy.”
Not sure that’s relevant here… an amendment to a bill in its second reading is hardly an RFC.
Richard Elen said: “We don’t even seem to have a properly formulated IT policy, let alone a concerted, integrated on the entire IT/IP field (if someone is putting this together then post a link and I’ll sign up to help).”
I’m surprised Aaron didn’t mention it himself when he commented shortly after you, but here you go:
http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/libdemsforsomedecentitpolicy
Grew a lot this week, funnily enough.
Not exactly the same scenario, but the same problem: people treating proposals by individuals as being party policy.
The DEBill is a mess. Apart from chucking the entire thing out, which I sadly doubt will happen, there should be some form of false accusation penalty / fine to stop copyright holders issuing strikes and taking down sites on an arbitrary basis. Otherwise, they could easily target people like me vindictively, just because I posted a comment like this.
Three false accusations and you’re disconnected from the net seems like an apt punishment to me… 🙂
I also have to say that as one of the rash “I’ll never vote for the LibDems again” commenters on the other thread, I’m impressed that you’re actually doing something to try to overturn this.
Miles (good idea about the penalty for vexatious threats by the way – really like that if this stupid thing goes through):
May I suggest that as a starting point for overall Digital Britain policy, we should be studying last year’s Digital Britain Unconference report? I also covered some basic suggested principles in the Cambridge group report co-authored with Bill Thompson – another person we should be talking to on this whole area – and you can find my write-up either in the Unconference report itself or here.
While we’re on the subject of media moguls driving the policy of the other parties, what the hell is Don Foster doing slagging off the BBC? They’re part of the digital economy too – not to mention being the best broadcaster in the world – and we should be supporting public service media, not encouraging them to follow Tory party policy when the Tories aren’t even in power! I think we can safely leave the BBC alone and any digital economy policy proposals need to ring-fence public broadcasting funding and protect the world’s leading media organisation from both commercial and political pressure.
This is completely ridiculous. Also, it has just emerged that Lord Clement-Jones draws a salary from DLA Piper – a group of IP lawyers who have worked for the RIAA and the MPAA in the past. He is basically being bankrolled by people in league with the recording industries and pandering to special interest. It is disgusting. As far as I am aware, no word from Nick Clegg. No responses from Lib Dems on Twitter. I am seriously reconsidering my support for the coming election.
Hmm – not reading threads again before you post eh, Robin? Well done.
Have a browse round this site – there are several on the go, with members actually doing something about this in a way no other party would countenance terribly easily. Why would one expect an announcement from Nick Clegg by the way? Unlike The Gord and Davey show Nick is not the only kid on the block in this party. We get things going for ourselves here.
And it has not “just emerged” that Clement-Jones gets money from DLA Piper. He was senior partner of Dibb Lupton Alsop before joining the House of Lords and it has always been in his register of interests. It would of course be highly surprising if one of the world’s largest law practices did not have considerable expertise and involvement in IP issues either. That is not intended to defend his actions in this case, but the way the House of Lords currently at least functions is that parties try to find experts in all sorts of fields for their Lords teams, and it would seem to me that Clement Jones is well qualified as such. Whether he should have been allowed near the DCMS brief of course, and this bill in particular, is another matter, but it would be quite wrong to suggest that his former top role in a major international law firm and hence continuing retainer by them, all declared, are some sinister new revelation.
If one is not willing to respond to occasional Tweets, what’s the point of having a Twitter account? That aside. This bill is not just a little something to get a little upset about. It is about a Liberal Democrat peer sponsoring an amendment that strikes at the heart of liberal principles. An attack from within. Now, if the party leadership cannot even stand up to Conservatives in in sheep skin, how will they stand up to real ones?
I believe that, on a matter of this magnitude, it is not too much to expect the leader of this party to react.
Well, knowing what has been going on, and not exactly “behind the scenes” either, but largley played out in these threads, I would not expect a statement from the party leader as he has not actually been involved in any of it yet.
Ordinary party members have the policy upper hand in this party, and ordinary party members have been as outraged as anyone in this but have spent the past several days getting meetings together with the parliamentary DCMS team itself, arranging emergency motions for this coming weekend’s party conference that will radically move the debate and the party position on not just this amendment but the whole of the bill and beyond into setting decent policy on IP/IT issues.
Certainly as one of those involved I would not be happy making a statement about what any of that contained until after we had achieved some consensus on what we are suggesting, which has now just been achieved and has been posted up on another of these threads. The text of the motion can be read online here.
So far as I am aware none of this has been done in consultation with anyone in the leader’s office, so I would not personally be expecting a statement out of him. As I say – members run this party, and members have been dealing with this issue in a pretty open way on these threads. If there is some serious roadblock to this occurs in Birmingham at the weekend, that’s when I would expect the leader to be getting involved, personally.
An emergency motion has gone into LibDem conference. You can read the text at http://bridgetfox.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/that-emergency-motion-in-full/
Conference reps going to Birmingham, please support this motion being prioritised for debate; and then please support it in the debate!
Arggh!
In item 1 in the letter your quote of the proposed text talks about “substantial amount” of material and your defence changes this to “substantial proportion”! These **DO NOT** mean the same thing! YouTube for example might well (at any given time) host a “substantial amount” without it being a “substantial proportion”. It is this kind of sloppiness that gets bad and dangerous laws passed, particularly when most MPs are too lazy to turn up for the debates.
This is a slippery slope – we have already seen the fact that ISPs agreed to Child Protection blocking used as an argument in this debate for copyright infringement blocking. Now we can expect this to be extended to blocking due to “super injunction” or the UK’s ridiculous sub-judice rules. Before we know it, most of the overseas internet will be blocked simply because someone somewhere on a huge site has said something perfectly legal in their own country but illegal in UK. And of course other countries will block UK sites because of some arcane local sensitivity. And of course rights holders will be able to use the threat of blocking to blackmail overseas sites into doing what they want.
The media organisations are big enough and ugly enough to pursue infringing sites using the laws and jurisdiction of the countries hosting the sites!
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