Burnham to fight for music industry

14:07 | Thursday July 17, 2008

In this morning’s DCMS Annual Report 2008 the Secretary of State for Culture brought the culture, media and sport select committee up to speed on the Government’s position on filesharing, format shifting and copyright term extension.

Burnham told the committee that “we have to find durable solutions to reward creative talent. If we fail we are failing the creative industries in the long term.”

He was loathe to get into detail about the negotiations currently taking place between the music industry and ISPs to bring an end to filesharing, but stressed a voluntary solution is still his “preferred option”. He said, “These negotiations are very live at the moment, it would be wrong of me to intervene and make public peoples’ positions…we want parties to agree a sensible solution.”

Burnham also said he is in a hurry to move on with the format shifting consultation. “There are a whole basket of issues that are coming into the mix,” he said.

“They are complicated issues in truth, but we have got to look at a whole range of consultations. I am determined we have a good result for the creative industries. We can not let these issues run and run. I want to get answers in all these areas, but they are complicated and there is a balance to be struck.”