Parker David: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Parker David: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
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Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to note that the Hon Chris Finlayson is a Minister in the House now. His colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith has been in the chair for most of the night on the Copyright (File Sharing Infringement) Amendment Bill and unfortunately he has not addressed the issues we raised that still remain outstanding with regard to the effect that the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations will have on the length of copyright periods and whether the section 92 provisions in the bill will be reopened. According to the  
New Zealand Herald 
 on 31 March from the content of leaked proposals from the United States Government in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations those things are on the table. The United States wants to lengthen the period of copyright so as to benefit the monopoly holders of those copyrights and also to reopen the issue about what responsibility Internet providers should have in respect of breaches of copyright that are carried out through the services they provide. 
The policy issues and the Labour position on the bill have been well outlined by Clare Curran and I will not go into that again. But I do want to just place on record that I think it is unsatisfactory that the Minister in the chair despite the fact that this issue has been the subject of prominent publicity has not been able to give us any assurance that the Government is not going to bend on these issues. I believe in copyright but I do not believe in open-ended copyright periods. I do not believe in unrestrained monopoly rights in any area. If one develops something that is patented which actually needs novelty and a lot of other steps to be proven before one can get a patent one’s patent does not last for 50 years beyond the life of the person who made the invention. It does not last as long as that. A patent right is a lot shorter in terms of years than we already have for copyright which currently goes for 50 years beyond the life of the creator. The United States wants to extend that to 70 years. 
The theory that lies behind copyright is not advanced by extending the copyright period. The theory that lies behind copyright is that there has to be some fair reward available to the person who creates creative content or content suitable for copyright in designs and things. It is important to allow that through copyright. Otherwise people will be unable to afford to produce the content that makes us richer as a society—and I do not just mean “richer” in a money sense; I mean culturally richer because we have the result of creative endeavour. So that is the theory behind it. 
When copyright was invented it was I think originally a law invention in the United Kingdom. Until then people could write a book and the next day someone could rip it off. So someone could rip off the book that someone else might have laboured 10 years to produce; the person who spent the 10 years writing the book could be left penniless and the person who ripped it off and then printed it could make a fortune and that was wrong. Apart from anything else if that had persisted there would not be many people writing books and we would all be the poorer for it. That is essentially why we have copyright but there does not have to be copyright for the life of the author plus 50 years after their death in order to encourage people to write books. It has already gone a lot further than that if we think about it. In practice an author does not write a book because someone else will get a royalty potentially 50 years after he or she has died. That is not real. And the fact that the Americans want to extend that to 70 years after the death of the author is patently about money. It is not about creativity; it is actually about extending the monopoly rights of the copyright holder. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: It’s not a monopoly. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is a monopoly. The copyright is a monopoly. Did I hear that member say it is not a monopoly? That is completely wrong. That is what people get when they get copyright. They get the right to control who copies it. The copyright holder is the only person who has the right to legally copy it. That person has monopoly rights. 
Jonathan Young 
: Personal property right. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is a monopoly personal property right. It is an intangible right as one member put it. 
Chris Tremain 
: No one is arguing that it’s a property right. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: What? 
Chris Tremain 
: That’s what the Minister said. He agreed with you. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Did he agree that the term should not extended beyond 50 years? 
Chris Tremain 
: No he said that it was a property right. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well no one is disagreeing that it is a property right. We are just saying there should be limits to that copyright. There should be limits and the Minister would not go on record and say it ought not to be extended beyond the existing term of 50 years after the death of the person who created the material that is subject to copyright. This is just so typical of this Government which really rules for the big end of town. Those at the big end of town are the ones who benefit from extended use of those monopoly rights. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: And employees of those corporations. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Oh I see. So there is going to be some trickle-down theory. I have no problem with people making money. I actually like businesses to succeed and make money. I like making money myself. It is nothing to be ashamed of. But we ought not to confer monopoly rights that give people a privileged right to extract a monopoly rent for an unfairly long term. That is why I made reference at the start of this to the theory that lies behind copyright. We should have recourse to that underlying theory which is to encourage creativity and creative content to be formed for the benefit of society. When there are lengths of copyright that are longer than is necessary to achieve that people should not kid themselves that they are in pursuit of the theory that lies behind copyright. They are not. They are actually agreeing to longer terms because it is in the monopolistic interests of those people who have that pre-eminent position as a consequence of their copyright and who want it to go on longer. That is all that is happening. So the Government ought to be clear and say it will not agree to that provision. 
Chris Tremain 
: So we’re going to socialise creative talent now are we? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: That member does not get it. He just does not get it just like Dr Nick Smith did not get it. But I do trust that Chris Finlayson will get it and that is why I am raising the issue. I hope that he keeps an eye on this in the negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Otherwise we will make New Zealand poorer as a country overall not richer. We will get poorer as a country overall not richer by agreeing to those sorts of unwise terms. We do not agree to ridiculously long lengths of patents. Why should we have overly long periods of copyright protection? That is all I am asking and we still have not had an answer from the Government on that. 
The other issue is that it would be a nonsense to go through all of this again and reopen the section 92 debate. I do not say Internet providers ought to be free of all responsibility in respect of protecting other people’s property rights. That is a cop-out. Having said that I say there are technological difficulties that cannot be ignored. It is no use having laws that are patently unenforceable which was one of the problems with the underlying law before its reform. I do not approve of laws that sit there theoretically on the statute book but cannot in practice be enforced because that brings the law into disrepute too. 
I support this bill but I am concerned that this Government is too permissive of monopoly excess. We hear people claiming that this is private enterprise. Monopolies are not an example of free enterprise; free enterprise relies upon—in its proper form in my view—competitive markets. These are exceptions to competitive markets. The Government is too ready to agree to uncompetitive markets in New Zealand. National has done it before in respect of lines companies and we still have it in respect of power companies where we have proven that there is monopoly excess gouging of consumers through excessive monopoly-based power being used to excessively price electricity in New Zealand. We have seen it before in New Zealand in respect of telecommunications. Currently legislation is going through this House that will create monopoly rights in respect of some incumbents in the broadband arena which has been widely opposed by most broadband market participants as being anti-competitive yet is still being pursued by this Government. So in New Zealand people are right to be suspicious of this Government when it comes to its control of monopoly excess and I certainly am. Thank you.