I thank all those who contributed to the debate. I am glad we got to the heart of it very quickly. I am particularly grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for their contributions of a technical nature. Who could fail to be persuaded by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who lied when she said she was simply a stage manager? Clearly there was a touch of the real authorial actor there as well and I was grateful to her for her points. My failure here was clearly to have not done my research and realise that despite his youth and clear vibrancy in terms of matters cultural, the noble Viscount had not listened to his children and worked out where “Gangnam Style” was coming from. I perhaps should have taken a leaf out of the book of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and actually done my bit of what it was that does it. It certainly would have amused the civil servants behind, but I think they were laughing already so it would have perhaps wasted my time.
On metadata, this was a probing amendment and was not meant to be one that would have solved the problem. I tabled the amendment because I think we are missing a key debate, and I am still not quite clear about when we are going to get that debate. The Minister said that legislative change in this area is not right, but he failed to explain why it is not right. Perhaps he will write to me and explain in a bit more detail. There is something here. It is clearly contentious,
and we are not going to be able to discuss it very well in secondary legislation. I think we are missing an opportunity here.
On parody, we are still left with a problem that was not addressed in what the noble Viscount said. The legal problem with parodies is that,
“they need to be close enough to the original to be recognised by the audience as a parody in the first place, which means that they will almost inevitably infringe copyright”.
How do we get out of that? These words are quoted by the IPO. They are from somebody commenting on a case which sets the situation here quite well: “Newport State of Mind”.
We will not solve this today, and there is no point in continuing it. I shall withdraw the amendment, but when can we have these debates? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.