The government should put intellectual property protection at the heart of the industrial strategy, writes chairman of the business, energy and industrial strategy select committee Iain Wright MP
The government’s proposals for an industrial strategy provide a significant opportunity to set a clear vision for what an ‘economy that works for everyone’ should look like in practice, and put the United Kingdom on a path to reach it. However, success will only be achieved if policies are of a scale to match the government’s ambition and clearly drive forward economic rebalancing.
The industrial strategy green paper places an emphasis on cultivating ‘world-leading sectors’ through sectoral ‘deals’. Arguments supporting sector-based interventions are frequently and understandably made on the grounds that each sector has unique needs and plays an important role in the economy. But without a focused approach towards the ‘deals’, there is a real risk that engagement leads to a lack of action rather than meaningful results, particularly for industries that cover a very broad range of products, services and businesses such as the creative industries. Policy interventions therefore need to help companies (including small and medium-sized enterprises – many of which ‘punch way above their weight’ as they deliver huge contributions from setups perhaps involving only 2 or 3 people), individual employees and freelancers and creators across the sector rather than benefit just larger companies.
The creative industries are a real success story for the UK, contributing £87bn to the UK economy (about £10m each and every hour). Despite this success there is no denying that people accessing and distributing content illegally is having a serious effect and is not only impacting larger companies but also the many SMEs all over the UK whose contributions fuel major components of the creative sector’s work – and the more than two million individual people, involved directly behind the scenes or in associated businesses, whose livelihoods and career opportunities depend on people accessing content from legitimate sources. It is critical that businesses of all sizes, individual creators and rights holders are afforded the best possible protection for their intellectual property.
Fortunately, the creative industries have already rallied themselves around a campaign which aims to make it easy to find legal content and to educate people about the time and effort that goes into creating the content that they watch, read and listen to – and so to reduce online copyright infringement. The ‘Get it Right from a Genuine Site’ campaign takes a whole new approach to reducing online copyright infringement by focusing on signposting to consumers the great variety of authorised sources that are available to them and educating people about the amazing opportunities that exist across the sector – while also targeting the minority of people who do access illegal content online. The most recent stages have showcased the valuable time invested by individuals in both creating and consuming great content as well as a component which sees internet service providers sending out the core messages of the campaign via educational ‘Get it Right’ emails to internet account holders if their accounts are associated with illicit file sharing.
We could do more though to ensure that value does not leach out of our creative industries and the tax and revenue they deliver to the UK. As a country we are supporting these industries through tax benefits and therefore we all stand to benefit if we help to protect them from copyright theft. New technologies are developing all the time and the government, when considering its creative industries ‘deal’ should put IP protection at its heart because it will clearly benefit the whole of the sector.
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Iain Wright MP is chairman of the business, energy and industrial strategy select committee. He tweets at @IainWrightMP
You can read more about the ‘Get it Right from a Genuine Site’ campaign here
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