This is my MP, Sir John Butterfill’s (Con­ser­v­a­tive, Bournemouth West), response to this e-mail.

Dear Mr Renton,

Thank you for your email about the Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Bill.

I note the var­i­ous con­cerns you have expressed which are shared by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party and can assure you that the Con­ser­v­a­tive spokesman for Cul­ture, Media and Sport has taken them up with the Gov­ern­ment. The Gov­ern­ment have said that they will bring for­ward some changes for the Report Stage of the Bill and we shall be exam­in­ing them closely to ensure that they address these concerns.

My Party and I are keen to move amend­ments that address the prob­lem of peo­ple strip­ping out iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion from a dig­i­tal image. We want to clamp down on this and ensure that the Bill does not encour­age such activ­i­ties. We also want to see in the leg­is­la­tion spe­cific require­ments for a search for the rights holder and a sys­tem in place if that rights holder comes for­ward at a later date. In no way should this Bill actu­ally harm con­tent creators.

I am very hope­ful that we can get this right, as sort­ing out the cur­rent sys­tem will unlock a whole host of con­tent that can be used for the pub­lic good. I really believe that the BBC and British Library archives for instance will be much eas­ier to access under these proposals.

Yours sin­cerely,

John But­ter­fill