Copyright and Select Committees

Colin Jackson from the Open Source Society has blogged a meeting between ICT reps and the Government over the new legal requirement for ISPS to terminate someone’s Internet account purely on the basis of allegations of copyright infringement.

The clause in question was in the original bill, and removed by the Select Committee (unanimously) as unnecessary as ISPs already terminate for illegal activity. The Select Committee also added on a clause to penalise people (up to $100,000 fines) who made false allegations of copyright infringement. This was also unanimously agreed to.

The Government then introduced at the Committee of the House stage an Supplementary Order Paper that reveresed both these changes made unanimously by the Select Committee. They put back in the provision for an ISP to be forced to terminate a customer merely on allegations of infringement, and even worse removed the penalty for false complaints.

What I found interesting from Colin’s blog was this explanation for why it was put back in:

When it opened, Judith Tizard spent 30 minutes telling us why the change had to be made. She began by strongly expressing her anger that we had complained to her at this stage in the proceedings. None of us, she said, had been to see her before this on this topic. When we protested that we had worked with the Select Committee, which had removed this provision – and balanced it with one which made licence holders liable for false accusations – this was completely inappropriate of the Select Committee, because Cabinet had already decided this was going ahead. We should not have been surprised, we were told, that this provision was reinserted by the government at the last minute before the bill was passed.

That is an interesting view on the roles of Select Committee. That it is completely inappropriate of them to mack changes that go against Cabinet policy.

So why do we bother with select committees?