Is EU right to expand 'right to be forgotten' to Google.com?

My Lords, Ladies, and Fairies

OK, so .co.uk must be cleansed, and the .com site that is shown to people in the UK must be cleansed, but what about those spoofing over a VPN or the like? Quite how far is this going to be taken? The answer is almost certainly that no one at all has actually thought this all of the way through so we don't, I'm afraid, have any idea at all what the end state is going to be.

To give another example of very much the same thinking JM Barrie's play, Peter Pan, has something akin to permanent copyright in the UK (the story of how this came to be is in the Bootnote). It is well out of copyright everywhere else in the world. So, in theory at least, someone watching a YouTube (or similar) performance of the play in almost all of the world doesn't need to kick in a penny or two to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, as in theory someone watching exactly the same video within the UK ought to.

Judging by the level of debate seen below, it’s maybe a good thing Tony Benn (2nd Viscount Stansgate) renounced his House of Lords position. Pic by IsuJosh, licensed under CC

It really is where something is watched (read, whatever) that determines all of these things, copyright, libel, and, yes, the right to be forgotten. ®

Bootnote

You'll be able to understand a great deal more about this precious stone set in the silver sea, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, if you follow this debate in the House of Lords which led to the permanent copyright for Peter Pan.

Barrie had left the copyright to the hospital and that copyright ran out a couple of months before a new copyright and patent bill was being passed. Jim Callaghan, former Labour Prime Minister, was now in the Lords and he tried to add an amendment to that new copyright bill. It's worth noting that another part of the bill abolished permanent copyrights: so it's a little odd that this clause established permanent copyright for this one play. But it did:

Lord Charteris of Amisfield:

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment not simply because Captain Hook was an Old Etonian - and he was! - but for a slightly more personal reason. I suspect that I and my brother, the noble Earl, Lord Wemyss, who is not present this afternoon, may be the only two members of your Lordships' House who, in company with their grandfather and six other children, had two plays especially written for them to act in by James Barrie.

Not only did he write the plays for us; he also rehearsed us personally. I can tell your Lordships that it was a most terrifying and awe-inspiring experience. However, in spite of being a frightening man, he was a great lover of children and I know from what I remember of him that if he had realised what was going to happen he would have been absolutely fascinated and delighted by it.

It is for that reason that I hope your Lordships will support the amendment, which is extremely imaginative. It is right that the work of James Barrie, which has given so much pleasure to children for so many years, should continue to bring comfort to those who are in trouble.

That's pretty good, but:

Lord Ardwick:

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down perhaps I may ask him a question which is rather more personal than we are used to in this chamber. Was he one of those cynical little boys who during the performance of Peter Pan refused to clap and so proclaim his belief in fairies, and would have allowed poor Tinkerbell to expire? That is what he is doing this afternoon.

Lord Willis:

My Lords, I must tell my noble friend that one of my greatest friends was Tinkerbell.

That's better I think.

Baroness Strange:

My Lords, JM Barrie once wrote that: "When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies". On that basis, if on no other, we must all believe in fairies.

It may come as a surprise to your Lordships that I have seen a fairy. She was a tooth fairy and she bore a remarkable resemblance to my noble relative, my mother. From time to time my children have also seen this same fairy, but they thought that she rather resembled me.

Fairies come in many guises, not only in tinsel dresses and with gauze wings. At all events they are little people who grant wishes and do good deeds around the world. We can do no greater good or give more lasting happiness than by accepting this amendment that has been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, so that the money from Peter Pan, JM Barrie's own play about fairies, can go for ever to the sick children of the Great Ormond Street Hospital, and ensure that every time one of those children laughs more fairies are born to create more joy in the world.

And obviously I'm entirely strange because I think that is marvellous.

Please be assured, this is not a spoof, not a satire. This really is how the laws of this great nation are made. And knowing that makes many of them rather more understandable. ®