argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jill Pitkeathley (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if those noble Lords who wish to leave do so before I call the next amendment Clause 15: Internet pornography: requirement to prevent access by persons under the age of 18 Amendment 54B
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Other
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Well, this is because the discussion has gone on over the summer, with the Government and with other people. We have been seeking clarification, which we have not had, which is why we finally put down amendments. Anyway, this debate is going to continue, I think, through the course of Part 3. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alston Maxton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, just for the sake of clarity, the noble Lord used the term "child pornography", which is not the purpose of the verification. Verification is to stop children accessing pornography—let us get that absolutely right and on the record.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this discussion. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, that we are all trying to balance child protection and civil liberties; that is the issue we are trying to resolve. Indeed, there is no black-and-white answer and it may well be that we will need to have further discussions. But I remind noble Lords that the Delegated Powers Committee said that it considered it objectionable for an unspecified regulator—people have talked about it being the BBFC but I do not think it necessarily will be—to have so much power to impose fines and take other enforcement action. We need to look again at how we can ensure some other oversight of those powers. Amendment 66 would provide a legal structure for all that, and we still feel it would provide the certainty that does not exist under Clause 23. Further, it would provide a degree of independent oversight, which Clause 23 as it stands does not I say again that the ISPs caught in the middle of all of this are very concerned about the way Clause 23 is worded. They feel that they will be caught in the middle of legal battles, and it may well be that whatever we decide, these matters will end up in court anyway. Given that, the more legal clarity and specification we can put in the Bill, the better, because that will help everyone to understand their rights. Some noble Lords have also queried the appeals process, but it is important to spell out not only what that process should be, but that it should be independent. Again, our amendments seek to achieve that I know that the noble Lord has said that he wants to come back to this when the more detailed response to the Delegated Powers Committee’s report has been produced. I hope that our amendments have been helpful and that they may provide a working copy from which he can put his ideas together. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I rise to support in particular the inclusion of Amendment 65 on the requirement for payment services providers to cease providing a service to those who flout the age verification rules, and I am pleased to say that it looks like we are building slightly more of a consensus on that than we did on the previous group of amendments. It seems to us that this is the most powerful measure that can be taken against rogue pornographic sites. If we can cut off their source of income, the likelihood of a positive response is almost inevitable The very nature of commercial pornography is based on the vast sums of money that can be made from it. Indeed, when we debated Part 3 at Second Reading, several noble Lords made the point that legitimate pornography sites would welcome the age verification process as they do not make any money from children casually visiting their sites; they want the more serious players to be involved because obviously they are the ones who are going to pay the money, so there is a kind of internal logic to what is being proposed. For these sites, the overriding concern is to harvest the profits, and any threat to that is likely to bring about an immediate response However, I also accept the point that we have to get the enforcement right, and I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about the experience with regard to the Gambling Bill, some of which I did not know. If there is a problem, let us talk it through and work it out because somewhere in the mix is the answer to our problems.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister. He is absolutely right and I am sorry if I did not make that clear. When we were proposing to take those words out, we were rather hoping that somebody would come up with a definition that would replace them—it was not just an attempt to take them out finally and for ever. It rather highlights the fact that we do not have another form of words to be working with today I do not envy the Minister in trying to balance all these different desires to get the wording right. We agree with the principle that offline and online should be dealt with on the same basis, but the problem is that in practice, what happens with offline material is not what is necessarily captured in the current legislation. That is the difficulty we are trying to grapple with. Our aim is to maintain the status quo. We do not want to ruffle any feathers or change anything. We want to make sure that what people can access online has the same checks and balances as offline has at the moment. The problem is the lack of a current substantial legal definition. As I said, there is a grey area, so we have to work our way through it. That is the difficulty As I said, I do not think that we should start redefining anything massively without a public consultation. People have talked about that and I agree. We are simply trying to protect the status quo so that adults who currently look at material can carry on looking at it—and this has nothing to do with child protection and children’s access to pornography. We need to understand what we are aiming for, but it is a question of getting the wording right. I am sure that the noble Lord will come up with something with which we can all agree in the medium term. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I support the comments that have been made by a number of noble Lords. I think we all understand the need for particular care to protect the identity of those who are over 18 and legitimately want to access pornographic sites. Apart from anything else, as has been said, we must protect those individuals from blackmail threats In this respect, the age verification process has to be more rigorous in providing anonymity than other regulations where proof of credit card details may have sufficed, but may also have made identification of the individual all too easy. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is not in her place, but I understand that the site that does the gambling checks does it on the basis of credit card details. Clearly, that would not be appropriate in the context of the issues we are grappling with here Thankfully, as we have heard, the technology is catching up with the need and there are now new age verification provider sites that can carry out the age checks. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for explaining in some detail how that works; it is all very reassuring. I do not think I have anything else to add: we have a consensus that some such measure needs to be built into the legislation, and I hope the Minister will agree with us.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, first, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, for stressing her point on enforcement. That is at the heart of the debate that we are having today. A lot of fine words are being said, but they are lacking the guts and enforcement to make any real change I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, who quite rightly made the point that material does not consistently get taken down. That very much chimes with evidence that we have received as well. Luciana Berger MP has made the point that, even when a case of anti-Semitism was taken to court and the perpetrator was taken to jail, the site that they had created stayed up on social media and was still there for anyone to access—that cannot be right. It raises questions about the responsibility of social media sites and whether they are acting with enough responsibility and consistency I was really saddened by the Minister’s response this afternoon, because I felt there was a degree of complacency in what he said. I do not know how much more evidence he needs to realise that the current arrangements are not working. As we have been saying, children and adults are suffering. There does not seem to be a mechanism where, if you feel that you are being abused, threatened, or having vile things said about you on sites, you can get any consistent recourse to have the matter dealt with. People say, time and again, that social media sites and the police are not working together consistently. On some occasions social media sites take action, but then the police do not follow it up. Sometimes it is vice versa: the police get involved, but then the social media sites do not carry out their responsibilities. This needs another look at—whatever the level or structure for which that is appropriate I will not press my amendments today, but I will not give up on this issue. I say to the noble Lord—and it may be that we can have further discussions on this—that a more robust response is needed from the Government than we have had so far, so I hope we can carry on this discussion. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this moves us into Part 4 and intellectual property. We start with rather a narrow but quite important point about the way technology is moving forward in this area and the need to make sure that the statutory basis under which we look at issues relating to broadcasting and television is kept up to speed. I am joined in Amendment 71B by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Foster, for which I am very grateful. I am sure they will give more examples of and more detail on the topic that we are discussing in this group, about devices and services that infringe copyright These amendments look at digital TV piracy, which is a relatively new phenomenon but has come about because of the growing amount of close-to-live retransmission of broadcasts—and indeed of live broadcasts themselves—and the services that provide on-demand access to films, television series and other audio-visual content, including music. The categories are slightly different, but they are both very damaging to rights holders. Devices normally feature a mixture of both categories of services, and you can buy them readily on the open market and install them yourself, so it is a growing problem for those who control content and wish to make sure that rights holders earn from it These amendments suggest changing two sections of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Amendment 79A relates to Section 297A and transmissions, while Amendment 71B relates to Section 107 and on-demand services. I beg to move.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alston Maxton (Labour, Centre-left): That does not include material that would not be shown otherwise on either a tablet, a computer or on television. I am wearing the tie of Hamilton Rugby Club, and I can watch the games on YouTube the week after.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): This has been a very useful exchange and I think that we have moved forward a little. I think the noble Baroness would accept that the point on which we ended was really the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, made—that there is a way of getting into this argument which tries to embrace that point about the technology. We may not have the flexibility or the ability to work the technology as well as our children and grandchildren do. It may be a generational issue. The problem may lie more in enforcement than in changing the law because, as the noble Baroness pointed out, the Fraud Act, the inchoate offences legislation and the CDP Act all contain provisions which can probably be used to tackle this issue. However, there is a lack of fit with that movement forward and the technology and the use being made of it by younger generations who do not see the issue in quite the same terms as we do Intellectual property as a business model is not well served by traditional models involving traditional economics. The whole point about a patent is that it gives you the monopoly that most of competition law seeks to remove, albeit for a limited period. Copyright is no different in that sense. This is not perhaps the time to argue this, certainly not at this stage in the proceedings, but it could be argued that by going to a "life plus 70 years" model for copyright—noble Lords who are earning money out of this should close their ears—we are probably making a mistake which future generations will want to come back to, because the incentive to invest in innovation has to be matched against the right to exploit that at some point. Arguably, life plus 70, particularly as people live longer, is probably not the appropriate model and a more restricted term, which would also be subject to additional requirements to make material available, might be the way forward. In that sense, some of this stuff might not therefore be a problem today as opposed to when we are a long way into it However, I welcome the investigation that the noble Baroness mentioned. The timing seems rather rapid for government; I was surprised to hear it but, if that is the case, who are we to say no to it? If the commitment is there and the Government are prepared to bring forward legislation to tackle this issue—I am sure that she said this, as I wrote it down—we could not be more happy. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alston Maxton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I too support this amendment, but—there is a "but" to it—there are of course two types of e-books. There are those physical books which have been transferred over and copied into an e-system, but there are also increasingly a number of authors who write an e-book directly; they do not publish them at all in written form. I am not sure that this amendment takes account of the fact that there are increasingly these two different types of e-books Secondly, the fact is that Amazon which, rightly or wrongly, is the major contributor to the e-book revolution—I have a Kindle in my own pocket, which I read, and I have never picked up a book since I bought it—does not take part in the British national library system at all, as far as I am aware, although it does in America. Increasingly, Amazon is setting up its own lending system, where you can borrow an e-book from Amazon for a relatively small sum of money. You can only borrow it for three or four weeks at a time, but you can borrow it directly from Amazon. I have just a quick question to the Minister. Is there any progress in terms of Amazon becoming part of the system? I gather that one of the problems is that it uses a different type of e-book to the one that is used by the public libraries in this country.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, briefly, I apologise to the House for the brevity of our Amendment 79B. We ran out of time and did not have the skills or ability to write an amendment that should properly have been in the Budget. We also lacked the temerity to do that. It is an aspiration not a probing amendment; it does not even qualify for that. It is a flag-waving exercise as we ought to think harder about the tax on knowledge. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said absolutely rightly, it is ridiculous that we believe that books in physical form somehow transmit knowledge and are worthy of having a VAT-exempt regime but when they are downloaded they must be subject to VAT. That seems unfair. We support Amendment 74 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and look forward to hearing the responses from the noble Baroness.
UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market — House of Lords, 2017-01-26
Topic: Immigration
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, there is a very strong consensus emerging in the House; I find myself in total agreement with the last two speakers, and I am very glad to follow what they said. I also have the joy of serving on the EU Justice Committee, chaired so well by my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. She will remember, as indeed will the noble Lord, Lord Oates, that when we were taking evidence from the French ambassador, there was a very telling moment—a moment for real thought. She was asked what she was encountering in the French community as a response to what has happened. She said very clearly that what is sad is that the people from France felt that they were part of Britain, enjoyed being here and felt that they were part of the community and belonged to it, but now they feel that they are strangers. I think that this deserves a great deal of thought. What are we doing to British society In my education at school, let alone later in life, I learned about the importance of citizenship, going right back to the classic Roman and Greek times. Citizenship is something very profound. When this country became part of the Maastricht treaty, people in the European Union had dual citizenship: European citizenship with all that went with that, and citizenship of their own country. Unilaterally, we have removed from our people living abroad and from European citizens living here that status of dual citizenship. They have lost the rights that they believed they had inherited in the situation to which we had come as a free party. I did not hear any evidence from what we heard in our committee that there was any indication whatever at the time that they became European citizens that it was clear to people that it was a conditional citizenship. We have removed their European citizenship I would be a much happier man if the message that was going out from this House and Parliament as a whole was "thank you" to the people who have come and contributed and committed their lives to this country—thank you to those in the health service; thank you to those in education, both in schools and universities; thank you to those who have contributed so well to commerce; thank you to those who joined the community, participated and enriched the life of our country by bringing different cultures with them. Thank you—we are absolutely determined that we will preserve your security and well-being into the future, whatever it takes. All this business of turning them into pawns and nothing more than a bargaining counter is totally unworthy of a Britain worth living in.
Joint Committee on Human Rights — House of Lords, 2017-02-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I have had some correspondence with the Clerk of the Parliaments. I had not realised that at some point this House agreed that any mistakes that are made in relation to room bookings represent a breach of the Code of Conduct. In other words, if a Member books a room and is not present for the whole of the period of that booking, they are then in breach of the Code of Conduct and can be reported to the Standards and Privileges Committee This is quite astonishing and I do not know when it got through, how it got through, and whether other noble Lords realised what was happening. I think we should be far more careful when we look at these Motions. We should have an explanation of why they are being put forward from whoever is moving the Motion—whether it is the Senior Deputy Speaker, the Chief Whip, the Leader of the House or whoever—so that we know exactly the implications. It would be quite astonishing if, just because of an inadvertence in relation to room bookings, a Member was in serious breach of the code. Could that be looked at again?
Privileges and Conduct Committee — House of Lords, 2017-02-09
Topic: Other
Jan Simon (Labour, Centre-left): I have just one further question, purely for clarification, following my noble friend’s question. If a room is booked for one hour and the meeting takes five minutes, does the Member have to stay there for 55 remaining minutes?
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for what he has said and the fact that he will write to me, although it is a pity that, because this is a money Bill, we do not have the opportunity to go into these things in Committee. However, will he agree with what has been said by quite a number of noble Lords in this debate, that the CDC, which of course has a lot of admiration, must remember that job creation and the eradication of poverty are not synonymous? Job creation can play an important part, but the eradication of poverty is a greater issue. We must not let one become a substitute for the other.