My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Minister on being extremely constructive in his attention to comments made by the music industry. Speaking as a composer, I sometimes feel on the horns of the dilemma that he faces. I would love to make my music completely free to schools and educational institutions but my publishers say, “It costs us money to produce it”, and the record people say, “It costs us money to record it”. That in a sense is the balance we have to strike here.
In the debate on 5 December 2013, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I spoke about what was then the forthcoming education exception and noted that the introduction of a “fair dealing” exception for the purposes of instruction was at that point of great concern to music publishers in this country. To them, the sale of sheet music for use in
teaching is a key income stream. The chief concern was that fair dealing is a vague term and unlikely to be understood by consumers of sheet music. As such, music publishers were delighted to see improvements made to the drafting of the education exception, in particular the narrowing of the fair dealing element of the exception to be,
“for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction”,
in line with the EU directive. This is a helpful and necessary amendment and goes some way to allaying the concerns of the music publishing community.
In addition, music publishers welcome the inclusion of the frequently asked questions on sheet music in the education and training guidance notes which accompany the statutory instrument. However, those frequently asked questions could, I respectfully suggest, be further strengthened to give greater clarity to music teachers and music students, who will benefit from the new exception. The suggested improvements to the guidance notes include a specific reference to the Government’s published interpretation of the new education exception: that copying of sheet music by private music teachers is unlikely to fall under the exception,
“as it is not non-commercial, and is unlikely to be considered either illustrative or fair dealing”.
Music publishers would also like the frequently asked questions on copying material for use in exams to state clearly that making a copy of a musical work for use by an exam candidate when performing the work is not allowed under this exception. This protection for sheet music publishers is explicit in Section 32(4) of the current CDPA and its removal from the new Section 32, with no clarification in the frequently asked questions on exams, could lead to confusion.
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