David Norris (Independent)

If that first record had been downloaded and deleted, the commercial interests might have said they were no longer interested in it and washed their hands of it. There are a number of situations like that.

A number of artists make their work available freely through the Internet. George Michael made a clear statement on that, as I believe did Sinéad O'Connor. Our business is to function as a Legislature. We are charged with putting laws in place and in doing that, we often get the advice of the courts. In this case a series of legal circumstances have emerged on which a clear series of judgments have been given, in particular in the judgment of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton to which I will refer from time to time in my contribution.

I am grateful to the Minister of State for giving me a copy of his additional remarks. They are somewhat more expansive than is suggested but they are interesting because they relate to the section of his speech that addressed the issue which prompted Senator Cassidy and others to place this matter on the Order which afforded Members this opportunity to engage in statements. I was a little surprised, therefore, that the issues is only dealt with in this short introductory section of the speech. The problem is that although the Minister of State said the European directive has been transposed into Irish law and gave the regulations under which it was transposed, he indicated that where an Internet service provider establishes that it is a mere conduit or carrier of information, it is not liable. Regulation 17 similarly covers caching or temporary storage. Regulation 18 deals similarly with hosting or permanent storage. That is precisely the difficulty Mr. Justice Charleton addressed. The Minister of State went on to say: "However, these regulations do not affect the power of any court to make an order against an ISP [Internet service provider] requiring that [the provider] not infringe or cease infringing any legal right."