A government Department is to take another look at a controversial provision in the Copyright Bill about which Irish newspaper owners have expressed concern.
Responding to arguments made by several members, the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr Tom Kitt, undertook to examine whether the measure could be improved before the Report stage. The point of contention concerns the legal authorisation for journalists working for newspapers and magazines to have their output used in other outlets without infringing copyright.
Dr Maurice Hayes (Independent) said that Section 23 (2) of the Bill seemed to depart from the generally accepted practice that intellectual work created by people in their employers' time and using employers' facilities remained the property of those employers. It appeared strange to make an exception in regard to the printed media.
Mr Paul Coghlan (FG) said the sub-section in the Bill was of grave concern to the National Newspapers of Ireland. He believed the National Union of Journalists was in agreement with the newspapers.
Dr Mary Henry (Independent) said she was always more worried about the suppression of information than she was about the problems publishing moguls might be experiencing. She would be more worried if we did not have a provision like 23 (2).
A considerable part of our media was already indirectly controlled by non-Irish individuals. "I would be more concerned that perhaps we could have people whose motives might not be the dissemination of as much information as I would like to see put before the public." Frequently there were facts newspaper proprietors might not want disseminated. Many newspapers were no longer "standalone" operations. In fact, she believed The Irish Times was the only stand-alone newspaper of which she knew. Mr Brendan Ryan (Labour) said it should be possible to draft a Bill in a way that defended the prior right of all forms of media to have first use of the work done by employees. He was concerned about a situation where media ownership was more and more concentrated in a small number of hands. There was the example of an owner in Britain who had a very clear political mandate. It would worry him that the ownership of the copyright of journalists' literary work might be used to suppress material.
Mr Kitt said that both he and the Tanaiste had been lobbied by the newspaper industry and, to a somewhat lesser extent, by journalistic interests. He believed he had struck a fair balance. The Minister said that while he was not in a position to accept the proposed deletion of the sub-section at this stage, his mind was not closed to further submissions on this matter. He would see if the Bill could be improved, particularly in regard to "first use".