My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, and other noble Lords for their not always helpful responses. I was very struck, however,
and think it very telling that the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, raised the concerns of photographers. That is really at the heart of much of the objection to the proposals for the orphan works legislation, but it does go wider. As I mentioned earlier, it extends to the news agencies and photo libraries, which have very strong concerns, particularly because at the moment—and despite what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said—we do not have the copyright hub fully in place. That would make a huge difference to the ability to carry out diligent search and identify circumstances where metadata has been stripped from contemporary photographs, which have effectively been turned into orphans. This is one of the problems. Photographers are worried about the possibility of a cynical exercise whereby a photograph is turned into an orphan by stripping the metadata, and, lo and behold, the diligence search is inadequate and it is treated as an orphan. There are uses for commercial purposes, not just by cuddly museums, universities and cultural institutions making an honest penny out of books in their shops, but by fully commercial publishers. So there is considerable concern, and it is not a question of polarising the debate but recognising the concerns underlying these orphan works proposals, which are held by substantial numbers of creators and rights holders. The European directive is, as I said clearly, not perfect in every respect, but to allay the fears of many it is better to build on that than have legislation that explicitly goes far beyond what has been said.
Clearly, I will not win the argument today—certainly not in the light of the Minister’s response. I am worried about foreign rights holders; I do not believe that diligent search will be that straightforward where foreign rights are concerned. I think that the IPO will find that a lot of concern is expressed as the regulations and the clause come into effect. It has already been expressed in letters to the Secretary of State and to the former Intellectual Property Minister. I suspect that the volume of correspondence from those foreign rights holders will increase over time.
I will read carefully what everyone has had to say. It may even be that I come back with a suitable response on various issues that have been raised here today. I believe that digitisation is a great deal more straightforward than it has been alleged today. For instance, my noble friend spent most of the time arguing for orphan works. At no point in this debate have I argued against the concept of orphan works; I think that they could be usefully employed, constrained within the right limits. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.