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Bridget Fox, a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate at the recent elections, is at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Digital Economy Act. In March 2010 she led a motion entitled Freedom, Creativity and the Internet, objecting to the measures for website blocking and disconnection of individual proposed by the Digital Economy Act. In a bid to defend against illegal downloads online, and to safeguard intellectual property, the Act currently would require ISPs to block online locations if they exercise substantial copyright infringement. Additionally ISPs would need to block individuals found to be downloading illegally. However, these provisions are still in discussion and have not yet been fully implemented. (For complete, up-to-date details, click here to visit the Digital Britain site).

In this interview, DFG investigates how Bridget Fox feels about online copyright issues and gets to grips with her side of a prolonged and heated debate.

Can you outline the Liberal Democrat stance to digital copyright issues?

I and many others felt the proposed measures around blocking of websites and disconnecting of individuals were inappropriate and disproportional, … One of the primary parts of the coalition agreement, is that there will be a freedom bill or a great reform act which will repeal much of the repressive legislation introduced under the Labour government…[My fellow delegates and I] explicitly want opposition to web blocking and disconnecting to be part of that Freedom Bill.

I’ve read in the press that Jeremy Hunt (Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport) has explicitly said that the Act will not be repealed.

The whole Act is quite a big portmanteau. It includes things about the future of Channel 4 and digital radio, which wouldn't be appropriate to repeal, and would be way beyond the scope of the Motion and campaign that I'm part of. We were looking at two specific areas: disconnection and web blocking. I firmly feel the Liberal Democrats have a mandate to seek to repeal both provisions of the Act even if the Act as a whole is not repealed… People like the Internet Service Providers Association, the Open Rights Group are continuing to campaign, and rightly so.

What are your general views on piracy? How much of a problem do you think it is?

It is a problem in some areas… copyright exists to protect small creators from big corporate predators as much as [it does] to protect corporate copyright owners from small individuals, but the balance has got to be right. It's always been a true principle of our common law that you are innocent until proven guilty. If you are found guilty the punishment should fit the crime, and the problem with provisions of the Digital Economy Act as it stands on web blocking and disconnection is that the presumption of innocence isn't there. If someone is going to get their…internet connection cut off because of alleged piracy, that could be any member of the household, of a small business, of a community. [However] everyone's Internet access could be compromised as a result. I'm sure every large family may have a teenager who's copied a bit of music illegally. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that are, it's certainly not right that the whole family's Internet access should be cut off as a result. [Likewise] with shared content websites, whether it's a big one like Facebook or YouTube, or a small one like a community bulletin board. Someone uploads a picture they like that happens to be copyrighted - are we really saying that the whole website should be taken down? My worry is that it will lead to self-censorship of some of the most creative and collaborative endeavours on the Internet. The equal open access platform that [the internet] provides will be compromised as people will self-censor. [Additionally, they may] censor each other for fear of breaching rules even if they're not [actually] breaching rules. And that goes against the liberating spirit of the Internet which I think is one of the most exciting aspects of it. You don't just want it to be all static corporate websites broadcasting or making paid content available, you want it to be a place where people can share.

Would you say that the film and broadcast industries are threatened by copyright infringment online?

Commercially ripping off commercial providers needs to be addressed…small creators being ripped off by larger enterprises needs to be addressed, but it's not a problem of the medium. There have always been breaches of copyright and you need measures which are appropriate to the medium. You know, the old days of people filming in film studios and making illicit videos available. I’m afraid where there is a desirable product, there’s a risk of piracy… I was actually a copyright librarian for my library for many years, making sure our library’s policy and practice were in line with the copyright legislation that came in during the late 80s. That copyright legislation isn’t appropriate for the Internet age... The Public Lending Right is a way of licensing libraries – we see similar messages, methods, methodologies, business models with things like Spotify for music or Gamehouse for games. People can subscribe and get material available legitimately. Pay per view television and subscription channels are very popular. I think if content is available in a way that is accessible and reasonably priced… people will play along with that. [Sharing online presents] real benefits to the industry as well. The film industry has benefited greatly from video clips and their ability to trail and market film directly to end users, in a much more targeted and powerful way, than simply advertising to old media. Any environment needs to be regulated, but…[in a way] that encourages its use, and doesn’t inhibit it, which could rebound on the creativity of the industry.

Outside of the industry, whom do you think will be affected?

The Internet…particularly with [its] collaborative provision, has the benefit to really liberate people from a low income demographic. [Amongst others], filmmaking and having control over your own broadcast media is particularly important to immigrant groups or newly arrived communities… [or] people with special interests…Those are the sorts of groups, who could really embrace collaborative filmmaking via the internet and they again lose out,  [despite] the aim of the legislation not necessarily being to make them lose out. That is what is so frustrating - the unintended consequences. That is why I think the execution has been very flawed, even if the Bill’s principles were at its heart not necessarily wrong. I think the other thing is about the Act, that these provisions won’t be implementable without various bits of technical enabling legislation. I think even if the government doesn’t rush to repeal the worst strategies of the act, they won’t be rushing to implement them either.

If the Act is implemented, do you think it would provoke more people to make copyright free work in order to maintain an online presence and therefore stimulate creativity?

It may – yes you may find new areas of activity, to navigate through the new regulatory framework, but it would be good to have them alongside other valid users which might find themselves inadvertently either banned or self censored as a result.

What major websites may be the first to be affected because obviously there is a provision in the act that proposes to block websites that infringe copyright?

You know the campaigners are saying that if this would be implemented we’d see YouTube close down tomorrow. In theory [there could be] one piece of [uncleared] content… and the whole site could be shut down. I think in practice, you’ll find that the big commercial sites like YouTube and Facebook will take make measures to stop that happening…they’ve got  the financial and legal muscle to challenge that… Collaborative sites, sites set up by students, freelance collaborative producers, perhaps campaigners, groups who are making campaign videos may incorporate bits of other material in their film [may get shut down]. Individuals, perhaps family groups creating online videos, you know the sorts of films…people in Australia make films to show their weddings to send to their relatives back in Europe which may inadvertently contain copyrighted material, perhaps the music played at the wedding...

Do you think this Act is enforceable as it stands?

I think it will be very hard to frame technical measures to implement this in a way which would only hit the real bad guy… [whom] we have a consensus on. If you frame the technical measures so that the law can be applied in practice to anybody, then you will undoubtedly hit some people who don’t deserve to be hit. And if you…tie it up in knots so you have to protect every eventuality against abuse, then it will be unimplementable anyway. I think there are existing criminal laws which deal with large scale commercial breach of copyright which I think is still a big problem. Not people sampling material, not people inadvertently putting up copyrighted material. You need to have serious criminal measures to deal with serious criminals. And you need to have economic models that accommodate people who want easy access to copyrighted material and are willing to pay modest sums for it - who are often copying stuff without paying because that is the most technologically easy way to do it rather than because they necessarily want to avoid payment. Classic example: Buying a newspaper at the railway station, I’m sure you’ve seen these huge queues at the WHSmith to buy newspapers…There was a real problem with people nicking newspapers, not because they were anyway dishonest but because they wanted to buy a newspaper but they were going to miss the train. So they introduced honesty boxes…You can just pay and put the money straight in the box… Quite often people will pay more than the paper costs because you know it costs, say £1.50 – and they’ve got two £1 coins, so they put that in. There’s no change you see, and they take the paper and go. It’s brilliant - it’s an imaginative, simple solution to a real consumer problem. So instead of having to pay for a security guard… they now make it easier for people in a hurry to pay for their newspaper and do the honest thing. And that’s the kind of the common sense approach we need to have to sharing content on the Internet.

Comments

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  Posted by Kerry McLeod on 27-07-10

  This article was amended on 27th July 2010. We originally - and erroneously - named Bridget Fox as a Liberal Democrat MP. She was a parliamentary candidate in the 2010 general election in the Islington South and Finsbury ward; a seat which was held by the incumbent Labour candidate, Emily Thornberry.

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