James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I move amendment No. 1:

In page 21, line 41, to delete “thereof).”.” and substitute the following:

“thereof).

(4B) (a) It is not an infringement of the rights conferred by this Act if a Board or authority to which this section applies reproduces any work that is made available in the State through the internet.

(b) Where any work has been made available in the State through the internet without a restriction as to its access or use, then it is not an infringement of the rights conferred by this Act if a Board or authority to which this section applies reproduces that work and makes it available through the internet without a restriction as to its access or use, whether or not that work continues to be available elsewhere through the internet.

(c) For the purposes of this subsection, a work shall have been made available in the State through the internet where—

(i) it is made available to the public either from a website with a domain name which relates to the State or to a place within the State, or by similar or related means, or

(ii) it is made available to the public either by a person any of whose activities relating to the creation or the publication of the digital publication takes place within the State, or by a person with similar or related connections to the State.”.”.

I will outline the intention behind the amendment. The Bill is welcome and we support it in the main. The purpose of this amendment is to address a lacuna. Certain web content may not have been available to preserve a historical registry of the .iedomain name content. A web archive is like any other kind of archive such as a library or copyright. We took advice from people like Professor Eoin O'Dell in Trinity, who is the foremost expert in this area, a constitutional expert and an intellectual property expert. His advice is that this measure is needed to strengthen the provisions. Essentially, the idea is to ensure that Internet content is treated in the same way as any other content for copyright purposes, such as content in a library or any other schedule.

That is the intention. It is put forward in good faith and comes from academic authority. I am interested in hearing the views of the Minister of State. I am always interested in hearing different views. If there are concerns about it, I am open to hearing them.Deputy Quinlivan may also wish to comment.