Illegal Music Downloading

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a great privilege to conduct the Adjournment debate under your watchful eye, Mr Speaker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) on calling this important debate on the music industry and the illegal downloading of music. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) for his important contribution and my hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) and for Hove (Mike Weatherley) for their important interventions.

During the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West, I felt that I was in the middle of a pub quiz. Let me rise to the challenge and say that the band that poured water over Lord Prescott was Chumbawamba and that Michael Jackson’s interrupter was Jarvis Cocker.

My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale is right to highlight the importance of the UK music industry. We are one of the few countries in the world that export music as a product, and the creative industries as whole form this country’s third largest export industry. For the first time since my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West was a young man—25 years ago—we have had three No. 1s in the United States, and Adele has just been nominated for six Grammys. My hon. Friend also referred to the success of the BRIT school, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and was brought into being not least by the efforts of Lord Baker.

We have a terrifically successful music industry as well as a tremendously successful film industry, which is enjoying one of its best years, certainly in the past 20 years. Indeed, for the past 20 weeks, a British film has been No. 1 at the box office. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to do all we can to protect the property of those who create music, films and the content of television programmes, which we all enjoy, so that they can earn a living from that. It is also important to stress that those who earn a living from music, film and television are not simply the highly successful people about whom we read in the newspapers and who may earn a significant amount, but many others, who earn relatively modest wages, whether they are technicians on films, people behind the mixing desk in a recording studio or session musicians working on a record. It is important that we work with them to support them and that we do all we can to reduce the prevalence of online piracy, which is basically theft of the property that those hard-working British people create.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale that we will never eradicate online piracy—such a goal would be foolish—but we can reduce it significantly.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In Northern Ireland, we have had many unfortunate examples of organised crime groups who abuse the system, bring out copies and sell them for profit. Does the Minister feel that more can be done to ensure that that does not happen, not just in Northern Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom?

[Mr Vaizey]

Certainly, trading standards officers throughout the country work hard to counter the sale of physical counterfeit goods, but the real challenge, which the debate highlights, is the creation of the internet. It has obviously done much good for our economy and economies throughout the world, but it has also made it so much easier to pirate content digitally as well as sell counterfeit goods online.

My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale referred to the Creative Industries Council. The Government are delighted to have established the council to highlight the importance of the creative industries and to work on important issues such as access to finance and skills.

I also hold regular round tables with rights holders, be that in the music, film or television industries, and internet service providers and providers of search engines, to discuss common issues. The last round table that we held was attended by open rights groups as well, so hon. Members who are interested in what happened can find out from very public blogs.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, one of the best ways to combat illegal piracy is to provide legal services that are easy to access for consumers. The creation of Spotify; Deezer, which has recently launched worldwide; WE7, which is based here in the UK; and up to 70 other legal music services has provided consumers with a range of different opportunities to purchase music legally. Some ISPs, particularly BT, are looking very seriously at providing an easy-to-access music service to their customers, which would significantly reduce—I hope—the demand for illegal music.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I agree that the way forward is to encourage sites that allow legal downloading such as Spotify, but the share of the money that the artist gets when a track is downloaded is tiny. It is not enough for struggling artists—the ones that cannot make money out of huge tours or selling lots of merchandise—to make a living. Has the Department looked into how the economics of that stack up?

[Mr Vaizey]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady on that, but even some money is better than none. On the need for education, which was mentioned earlier, it is important for her and others who feel like her, including me, to emphasise when we go to schools that many musicians and artists are not Adele, Coldplay or similarly successful groups and artists, and do not earn a great deal of money. The more prevalent illegal downloading becomes, the less opportunity they have to earn a living.

The Digital Economy Act 2010 was passed by the previous Government and this Government are in the process of implementing its procedures. Hon. Members will be aware that, in effect, this is the “three strikes” Act. We are in the process of putting in place the initial obligations code and the cost-sharing code, which should happen next year. It is important to stress that the letters that go out to people who might have infringed the law will be of an educative nature. They will not be of a penal nature and they will not cut people off; they will simply make the point that it is apparent that illegal downloading has taken place from their computer. The letters will also advise them how they can access legal music sites and protect their computer.

On supporting legal download sites, I am delighted that Richard Hooper has been appointed to take forward the digital copyright exchange. We hope that the exchange will be an industry-led initiative that will make it much easier to license intellectual property, music, film and television so that it can be used for innovative and new services. That is part of the Hargreaves report, which, although we are absolutely intent on protecting copyright, is looking at how we can bring copyright law into the 21st century.

Hon. Members will also be aware of the success that the Motion Picture Association of America had in seeking an injunction against BT to block the Newzbin2 site using section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. That is something that the previous Government and this one urged on the industry, and we are delighted that existing law was used to seek an injunction to block a site that was intent on infringing copyright and on effectively selling illegal products over the web. That injunction has now been in place for two weeks, and I gather that the MPAA is seeking further injunctions against other ISPs.

I should stress that that process, too, is a legal process. Rights holders go to court and seek a legal injunction. It is not a voluntary process or a process outside the legal system, and that is exactly how it should be.

We are also working with internet advertisers to try to reduce the amount of advertising that appears on infringing sites. This can often be inadvertent, given the wide spread of internet advertising, but the Internet Advertising Bureau has made significant progress in reducing the amount of advertising that appears on illegal sites, and it continues to work on the issue. In fact, it is probably a world leader in the work that it is doing alongside the Internet Advertising Sales Houses association. We also work with credit card companies to ensure that their payment systems do not appear on illegal websites. So significant progress is being made on this issue on a range of fronts—credit cards, advertising, the blocking of websites and the implementation of the Digital Economy Act, as well as bringing rights holders together with ISPs and promoting legal sites for music and other content.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the work that Google is doing, and over the last 18 months relations between rights holders and Google have improved significantly. Google has set the bar in dealing with notice and takedown, and it is now possible for infringing pages to be removed from Google’s search engine in four hours, which is a very impressive turnaround time.

There remains a vigorous debate between rights holders and search engines, which in this case means Google for all intents and purposes, about the ranking of different sites. It is certainly a matter of extreme frustration to rights holders that typing in the titles of songs produced as if by a factory by my hon. Friend in the 1980s—such as “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley—results in some infringing sites appearing above the legitimate site, thus depriving my hon. Friend of income that he richly deserves. Some voluntary procedures have been put forward, and we understand that Google’s issue is that the algorithm is its DNA, as it were, but we also understand the concerns of rights holders. We are hoping to find a voluntary solution.

This has been a good debate, and it is important to highlight the work that we are doing to try to protect our content industries. I also wish to highlight the interest in the House at this late hour from a range of Members, all of whom have an impressive background in the creative industries.

Question put and agreed to.