My Lords, I not sure why these two amendments have been grouped together because they are completely different. However, I will deal with the first one on metadata. I do not know what it has to do with stripping metadata off whatever you might read on the internet. It is saying, as far as I can make out, that if you have an automated system that comes across some metadata, it should respond to that intelligently and either not breach copyright or know that you are permitted to use it. But it does nothing about controlling the metadata or stopping people from stripping it.
In as much as it is saying that you should look at the metadata and therefore respond to it intelligently, yes that is a nice thought. However, I wonder whether many programmes would be able to do that. I can see that it is probably targeted more towards the search engines and various things like that. I can see some problems with this and think that it will have to go into regulation to work out how to handle it.
We also need to think about the world stage and what is being done in other countries, because a lot of these things that look for items on the internet are based abroad. We want something that is practically useful. We do not want to drive things out of the UK. I am not saying that we should breach copyright and I think that we should use metadata intelligently to try to achieve the aims that we want, but we must be careful how we do it.
I am also keen on the use of data mining for research purposes. For example, you can talk to Wellcome and such people. Huge benefits have come from looking at disparate research material. Very often, new discoveries come from matching things from completely different spheres. That is what we forget when we worry about the protection of copyright for the artist or creative
person in that sphere. Actually, researchers have completely different needs. They will not usually go around ripping off other people's ideas.
One of the challenges with this whole area of copyright is that we are trying to treat everything as if it is the same. It is not. Very often, when we benefit one lot we will disadvantage another and we need to be careful not to do that. That slightly worries me.
Leaving that to one side, Amendment 28DZD has a good point behind it, which is that you must have an exception for parody. Leaving the courts to decide what is fair in parody and what is not is very dangerous. As we know, courts are extremely expensive. If you are a small creative group trying to create parody and a big boy comes along and tries to hit you over the head in the courts, you will have to back down. That is bullying. Unfortunately, I do not think that our laws on bullying prevent that. If they did, we might be able to do something about it.
We must be very careful saying that recourse to the courts is workable. Basically, unless you are very rich or very poor, you are outside the law. You are not protected by British law because it is too expensive. That is something I have become aware of in general. We cannot rely on it. I think it is very important, but I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We cannot try to attribute every single little thing that one tries to parody. That would be absolutely ridiculous and unworkable. Without that bit about the attribution, the idea that we are trying to protect parody is extremely important. Therefore, I like this amendment; it just needs a bit of tidying up I suspect.