Curran Clare: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Curran Clare: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:18117] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 We have just heard another lot of hot air. The Minister for the Environment is dissembling shall we say. He does not understand the issues he cannot enter into debate on the substantive issues in the bill and he will not address the underlying major issues that I was attempting to address. 
I would like to continue talking to the Committee about the market failure which is essentially the most important issue that this country and this Parliament should be addressing in terms of how we as a nation can create encourage foster and support our creative content which is essentially our cultural identity and can ensure that it is available to our citizens and to the rest of the world. We should also enable and encourage new business models to occur that will enable people to use the Internet which is our future and enable them to share content legally. When my colleague on the Commerce Committee Jonathan Young earlier talked about the— 
Simon Bridges 
: A good guy. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: He is a good guy—sometimes. He talked about the fact that the future is meeting us. I think that is what he said. I wrote “No! No!” in my notebook because essentially the future is already happening and this legislation is behind the eight ball. 
Although Labour has supported it because we support the fundamental principle of copyright and acknowledge the importance of protecting the creative content that our people and our nation create—it should be protected—we also know from what is happening from the behaviour out there in the world that there is a fundamental market flaw. I will go back to David Farrar’s submission. He said the reports about the damage being in the billions of dollars assume that “every single download of a ‘work’ is a sale that would have otherwise occurred. This ignores the fact that many downloaders ‘try before they buy’ or in other words download to see if they like something and if they do then purchase it legally. This is not to condone such acts”—and every submitter who came before the select committee was not condoning these acts; they were describing what is happening in reality what our children are doing and what our friends are doing and what apparently none of us are doing but just about every person we know has family members who have done this—“but to point out that the assumptions over economic damage are unwarranted.” He continued: “In Australasia the most recent stats (from the Int Assn of the Phonographic Industry) show that music revenues are up 3.5% (physical sales down 2.4% digital sales up 41.4% and performance rights up 8.6%) in 2009. Also APRA reported that in 2008/09 distributions to music creators increased by 10%”. At the same time and I hope the Minister is listening “In the movie industry global ticket sales were up 7.6% … during the worst recession in 70 years.” 
The point of these statistics is to put the claims of the industry groups into proportion. Legitimate sales of content on the Internet are going up more and more content is being sold and the claims that illegal file-sharing are causing such damage are simply false. What has happened is that there is a market failure and here I am lecturing the National Government on market failures. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Gareth Hughes to clause 7 be agreed to: 
to omit new sections 122O 122P and 122PA.