§ Sir Paul Bryanasked the Minister for Trade (1) if he will introduce amending legislation to enable producers and distributors of pre-recorded video cassetes and video discs to require wholesalers not to supply to copyright-infringing third parties the products of which the producers and the distributors are the copyright owners;
(2) if he will publish in the Official Report the maximum first offence penalties for video counterfeiting in each member State of the European Community;
(3) if, in view of the rise in the level of video and audio piracy, he will seek to introduce early legislation to increase the criminal law penalties for copyright infringement without prejudice to a later and more general reform of copyright law;
(4) if he will seek to raise the penalties for audio and video piracy in the United Kingdom to make them equivalent to those contained in the Piracy and Counterfeiting (Amendment) Act 1982 in the United States which provides penalties, including those for first-time offenders, of up to five years' imprisonment and/or fines of up to $250,000;
(5) if he will take steps to collect statistics on the incidence of video piracy; and if he will make an estimate of the scale of increase over the past year.
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§ Mr. SproatI shall reply to my hon. Friend as soon as possible.