Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

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

Amendments Nos. 2 and 9 provide for the creation of a legal digital deposit. I have raised his issue many times in the House. The legislation puts the onus on copyright deposit institutions to request each and every publication they wish to deposit. This is well beyond the resource capacity of any of our national institutions, for example, the National Library of Ireland. The inevitable result of this is that material will be lost. While other states have facilities for capturing their web domains, for example, nobody is systematically capturing the .ieweb domain. I have been designing websites since I was 15, and the Minister and his colleagues in the Department will know all too well about the Wayback Machine. It is a not-for-profit enterprise, like Wikipedia, which captures web pages. We need to reflect on the law that provides for hard copies of books and apply it to the digital age, and we need to do it fast.

The only logical solution is to allow the National Library of Ireland and other bodies to sweep the .iedomain at regular intervals and to capture the contents. Libraries and museums have historically been the custodians for everything that is published. They are custodians of our national cultural heritage, and they are the best places to collectively store that knowledge. Such a process would have to be mindful of journalism or other work behind paywalls. We could look at international best practice for that. Some national libraries have every website available on-site; one would have to go into the national libraries to view the files or contents of the websites. If we do not act we risk websites such as the campaign for civil marriage equality, the Together for Yes campaign or the pro-life campaign disappearing. Most web pages disappear, on average, within 100 days, so the longer we wait the more we lose.

The legislation proposes that the responsibility for depositing the material would be given to each publisher. Notwithstanding the administrative burden and resource problems I mentioned, such an approach would leave the process open to non-compliance. Mass non-compliance in the creation of a legal deposit simply defeats the purpose. I am aware that the Fianna Fáil amendment, which was accepted in the Dáil during Report Stage, establishes a feasibility study into the creation of a legal digital deposit to start 12 months after the enactment of this Bill. However, the study may take one to two years to complete and a further one to two years to be brought forward as legislation, which is too long. I have mentioned that the average life of an individual web page on any website is 100 days. I have also mentioned the fact that we are lagging behind our European counterparts on this. For these reasons, a feasibility study would only delay this matter further.

My interest in this comes from the cultural aspect. The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht commissioned a consultation on establishing a legal digital deposit. The support from Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Ireland, among other libraries, was overwhelming; some 90% of the feedback the Department received was in support of the establishment of a digital deposit. It was strongly recommended. Has there been much engagement between the two Departments? The consultation developed when the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Humphreys, was the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

The need for such an endeavour has been pointed out by the copyright deposit institutions, which strongly supported this proposal in the public consultation. It was also mentioned in the modernising copyright report, published in October 2013, five years ago. The consultation with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht was carried out in April 2017. The time for examining feasibility has long passed. It should have been done as soon as it was recommended. The only way we can have certainty in respect of this issue is to provide for it in law through this Bill, and I respectfully encourage the Government to do so.