Bill C-11 (Historical)

Copyright Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Copyright Act

This enactment amends the Copyright Act to
(a) update the rights and protections of copyright owners to better address the challenges and opportunities of the Internet, so as to be in line with international standards;
(b) clarify Internet service providers’ liability and make the enabling of online copyright infringement itself an infringement of copyright;
(c) permit businesses, educators and libraries to make greater use of copyright material in digital form;
(d) allow educators and students to make greater use of copyright material;
(e) permit certain uses of copyright material by consumers;
(f) give photographers the same rights as other creators;
(g) ensure that it remains technologically neutral; and
(h) mandate its review by Parliament every five years.

Copyright Modernization Act

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Sorry.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. I know the hon. member for Delta--Richmond East will want to refrain from using names. She has already apologized so we will carry on.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I do apologize to my colleagues in the House, Mr. Speaker. Sometimes claiming newness does work, but I do apologize for that.

Our own Prime Minister personally promised U.S. President Bush in 2008 that Canada would pass copyright reforms. Former industry ministers raised the possibility of leaking an advance copy of the copyright bill to the U.S. Former industry ministers gave advice and encouraged the U.S. to pressure Canada by elevating us on its privacy watch list. Former heritage ministers caved to U.S. pressure by enacting an anti-camcorder bill despite departmental analysis that no changes to the law were needed. An official of the Privy Council Office leaked the contents of the mandate letters for the then prime minister's aide. Canada participated in a WTO complaint on copyright against China at the request of the U.S. despite the inability to amass credible evidence of harm against any Canadian interests.

After years of false starts, it is clear that the copyright bill will pass. The government has a majority. However, I appeal to the government and to the House to look at this and make it so that it appeals more to what Canadians need, what our Canadian creative talent needs, as well as our Canadian consumers.

As a teacher, I was pleased to see parts of the bill. I was pleased to see there was a bit of relaxation for educators. On the other hand, I wish there had been a bit more. I was then disturbed when I read that the material that students access will get destroyed within 30 days. When they finish a course they must shred whatever they have.

That made me think about what my history has been like. I know some members will be really wondering what planet I live on, but I do still have my high school notebooks and, believe it or not, I have actually used them when I was covering world history. We do not need to reinvent everything. In the same way, I still have many of the papers I wrote, including some of the research I did from my university days. I do not have boxes of contents. It is all in one box neatly tucked away. However, those are the gems I have treasured over the years and, as a teacher, I have held on to those.

Here we are asking students to destroy things at the end of the course. However, a student who may want to retake the course in order to improve his or her marks, because GPAs drive everything these days, will have no documentation because it will have been destroyed. After 30 days apparently there will be a self-destruct motion, which I find absolutely fascinating.

We are a multicultural society and, as a multicultural society, we get bombarded with all kinds of media. I have am 84-year-old mother who is very fond of Bollywood productions. She purchases and watches those Bollywood productions. As I am looking this, I am thinking about the kind of restrictions this legislation would put on her as she tries to hang on to some kind of heritage and really enjoys watching a Bollywood movie when she cannot go for a walk. I hope there is nothing in the bill that would restrict my mother's ability to watch a movie more than once and then even play it when we visit her just so that she feels we are watching television some of the time, or at least what she watches. My mother is not the only person who could be impacted. Many communities will be impacted.

As I said earlier, there is an absolute need for us to modernize our copyright laws. They are outdated. They do not suit or address the serious concerns we have now or the advances we have made in technology.

In doing that, let us also ensure that we do not forget the rights of the creative talent that will seed a lot of those ventures that we are trying to copyright. As well, at a minimum, we need to address the lock and how that in itself affects not only revenue but could kill creative talent.

In a world that is so digital that once something is sent out by accident, one cannot recall it because it is all over the world, we have to be very careful as we move into this area of copyright.

I hope that members of government will take a serious look at the concerns raised and address some of those concerns through amendment.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to hon. member speak and I believe her heart is in the right place, but some of the facts are missing in her argument.

When the bill was at committee in the previous Parliament, we heard from numerous groups that came forward: folks like Perrin Beatty from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and John Manley from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. We also heard from the entertainment software industry, of which Canada is one of the leaders globally in entertainment software, gaming software and so forth. We heard from the Canadian film industry and MusicCanada. Graham Henderson was here with Loreena McKennitt.

They did not get to give all of their testimony because we were cut short by a vote that was forced by the opposition members on that day. They would not extend the time to allow the witnesses at committee to speak their minds. However, they all spoke passionately in favour of the bill. One of the reasons is because the bill targets the wealth destroyers in this country.

Canada is a bit of a pariah. It may not be comfortable for some folks to hear that, but we have to pass the bill because we have wealth destroyers operating in this country like Pirate Bay and isoHunt. They want to take what is created by the artists in this country and give it away for free.

The bill would force that product back into the market. It would force people who want to consume a product to purchase it. Then the person who created it would get paid for it. What is so wrong with that?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, none of us have too much of a problem in going after people who do illegal things and break the law. Absolutely, there should be punitive measures.

However, when we are looking at changing a copyright law to address the new world we live in with the new technologies, surely it behooves us to look at the impact of the bill, and not just on the software companies and the content owners who do make huge profits. Surely, at the same time, we have to look at protecting the rights of the creative talent without whom these software companies would not be able to make that kind of profit or be the wealth makers.

We are not saying that we should not make changes or modernize. We are saying that we should take a look at the impact of the lock system being proposed, and how it would limit and destroy creativity and force people out from working in this area.

I have to admit that I am delighted that my grandchildren love the piano and music. They see futures and a career, not at the selling end but at the creative end. I would hate to see us do anything to limit that. I see some problems with the bill.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this debate reminds me of something that my brother told me. He is a musician and music teacher. He told me that the training and education of musicians today, because of modern technology and the Internet, is radically different from what it was when he and I were growing up. The reason is that musicians are listening to a vastly greater amount of music and a much more varied collection of music than we did when we were growing up and learning to become musicians.

My question to the hon. member is in regard to the exemption for education. Does she think that the definition of education needs to be made more precise or elaborated on more in the bill than it is at present?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I always think that the definition of education needs to be broadened because I believe everything we do in our life, in one way or another, is an education.

I do agree that when we are looking at the kind of education that young musicians and artists are going through today, it is in a very different world. Because it is happening in this new environment, we need to relax the rules a little bit, so that they can benefit from other artists' work and learn from it.

At the same time, as we are doing that, when we look at this bill, it actually further restricts the education definition.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the hon. member's speech, and she touched on a number of important points. The Conservative member said that authors need to be protected through punitive measures. I am wondering if the hon. member shares my belief that it would be much better to pay a levy on the new technology we are using. I am not talking about a tax, but a levy that would be paid at the time of purchase. This money would go to the creators.

When a composer writes a song that is then stolen by thousands of people, he gets no revenue, so he has no way of suing the thieves, the people who are stealing his work. That is the problem. It is easy to say that artists can just sue someone who steals their work, but they do not have the means to do that.

The easiest way to avoid the problem of massive legal costs would be to just collect a levy when someone buys a device that can record 1,000 or 2,000 songs. That would bring an element of fairness, as was the case with blank cassettes when everyone was recording songs on them. There was a levy of 50¢ or 60¢. Or it may have been 28¢; I do not remember the exact amount. This money was given to the creators. We could do the same thing with new electronic devices.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely believe that we need to find a way to ensure that artists receive fair compensation. How that can be achieved is a much bigger discussion than we can have here today.

With the system that is currently proposed, we actually have a real danger that consumers will be able to purchase content that they will not be able to use later on. So even if consumers buy something, there is no guarantee that they can continue using it for the purpose it was purchased.

Also, because the digital lock actually supersedes other rights guaranteed in the charter, an area that I actually really wanted to talk about before I ran out of time, it will impact our citizens with disabilities and that lack of ability could change the format of digital materials.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member sitting behind me for her eloquent speech on this bill. Since the member is an educator, I would like her to comment on the fact that digital locks are going to exist on some of these discs and after five days they will be destroyed, and that course material used by long distance students will have to be destroyed after 30 days. I would like the member to comment on how she thinks long distance education is going to be affected by this bill?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am always fascinated by the term “self-destruct”. It always reminds me of some science fiction movie I have watched over the years. However, it is a concern that within five days, the digital material will self-destruct, whatever that looks like.

My greater concern is the impact this would have on every day students, but more on distance education. Those who have been in the education field would know that distance education actually allows students to work at their own pace. When they are working at their own pace, we could imagine that some might finish an assignment in a couple of days while others might take longer. One student can finish a history 11 course in a semester, and another one can take three semesters.

In education we celebrate the fact that the students complete the course. This kind of limitation would put all kinds of barriers in the way, and once again, once the students have received this material, 30 days after the course they have to destroy everything.

Why would we be asking students who have learned material, who have gathered things together, to destroy it all after 30 days? Surely we want them to have ongoing learning. They may even read it in the bathroom a few years down the road, we never know.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would inform you that I will be splitting my speaking time with my colleague from Québec.

Today we are talking about Bill C-11. Never has a name suited a bill less. This is not a bill about copyright, it is a bill about the denial of copyright. Coming from a Conservative government whose trademark is hate, fear and despair, this is not surprising. It is not surprising that this same government, which has cut international representation of artists, is again attacking people who advocate something other than hate, fear and despair.

With this bill, the Conservatives are giving the digital industry complete ownership of Canadian culture. It has all the rights, all the resources, and the financial sacrifices made for it. Canadian artists are no longer anything but foils. They are no longer entitled to any financial compensation for their works.

This evolution is taking place internationally. There are two trends. The American trend is to simply try to install technological locks to prevent copying, and give the owners of search engines or Internet sites the right to penalize people who violate their rights or have them sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The artists are the ones forgotten in this debate, because there are also effects on private copying in Canada. They are also totally ignored and deprived of the economic right to earn a living from their works. This bill gives the owner of the Internet content complete power by controlling a lock. It also gives them all the rights in copies and the right to deprive artists, what was called private copying.

At the time, this was not a problem. There were vinyl records and cassettes. They were produced and sold by the unit. Artists received royalties on their works with each sale. When the compact disc and the computer arrived on the scene, there was a financial problem. Records, films and any artistic content could be copied. The response from the Canadian industry at the time was to add a levy for private copying to the price of a compact disc. That generated very substantial sums for Canadian artists—over $60 million. But the technology has continued to evolve. We have seen the emergence of new digital devices like the iPod and the BlackBerry, which allow a work to be reproduced ad infinitum without necessarily having a physical medium like a CD.

For the first few years, we got around the problem by expanding private copying rights from CDs to all digital equipment. This allowed artists to continue receiving the same amount of money. Unfortunately, the legislation was not adapted in that respect, which meant that all of these private copying rights became obsolete. The owners of these rights were deprived of their revenues. For the industry, this meant the end. The music recording industry disappeared. Manufacturers do not produce records anymore. Artists now produce their recordings themselves. The large corporations provide only marketing and commercial support.

Sales have dropped considerably. Not only did these people lose all financial support, but they were told to simply accept it. Educational institutions were even told they had to give up their rights. It was left to artists themselves to pay for the rights of educational institutions to have artistic material.

The creation of these infamous digital locks, intended to prevent piracy, led to two major problems. The first has to do with consumers' rights. There is no guarantee that consumers will really get the artistic performance for which they have paid, to be able to put it on their computer, through the Internet. This basically depends on the capacity of the search engine, the website they are using, the links. It depends entirely on all of that.

The second problem has to do with artists’ rights, copyright, which is completely absent from this bill. It has completely disappeared. It is no longer there. That is why Bill C-11 is not the Copyright Modernization Act, but rather an act to deny copyright. It cannot be called copyright if the individual who has produced or invented something derives no financial benefit. That person's work is being stolen and the government is letting it happen.

It is quite clear whose side this government has come down on when it comes to the new digital economy and the Canadian artistic community. Once again, the government has decided not to be Canadian. It has decided to favour foreigners at the expense of our economic rights and our cultural rights—because Canadian culture is also at stake. The Canadian economy is financially well off. Prosperous, according to reports. Unfortunately, it has been determined that this prosperity will not trickle down to the artistic community, that this community will be deprived, and that only foreigners will benefit from it. Canada is being stripped of a key part of its makeup: its culture. Culture has never been a strong suit of the Conservatives, nor of this particular government.

Need I remind you that this very same government slashed budgets for culture and is cutting the CBC budget, and that it continues to cut and cut deep. It even presided over the demise of grants for international representation. The government hates everything to do with culture. It is an area over which you have no control, and that which you do not control, you usually do away with. That much does not change. Once again, you are attempting to do away with something that you do not like, that you do not control, that is not there to serve you, that does not fit in with your philosophy on wealth creation. It is as if creating something, creating a cultural asset, is not in and of itself important. You do not give it an economic value. You do not assign it a monetary value.

The problem is that, as a consequence, the Conservative government is robbing Canada of its soul. It has deliberately decided to do away with everything that artists need. What do you expect them to do? How do you expect them to live with no income? These people should still have a right to earn income for what they have created, but you have decided to steal from them legally. Because that is what it is, theft.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I remind hon. members to direct their comments to the Chair.

Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it would be so helpful if before members rose to speak to a bill they would actually do some work to understand the issue at hand. The member went off on a complete tangent talking about how this is an attack on artists. What complete nonsense. Does the member know what is an attack on artists? The fact that wealth destroyers like isoHunt and Pirate Bay allow people to copy works by artists as much as they want onto their hard drives and never pay a dime for it. That is an attack on artists.

What is the member's solution for it? This is what he is not saying because he is speaking in code. He is saying that we should put in place an iPod tax. Why does he not just come out and say that an iPod tax is what he wants, instead of talking in tangential comments that do not even make sense? Nobody at home even understood what he said.

This is not an attack on artists. This is a support for artists. It is a support for industry. That is what the Chamber of Commerce said. That is what Music Canada said. That is what the Canadian television and film industry said. They said that this will create jobs and investment. That is what the member stands against.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the right to private copying is not a tax; it is a levy. Our Conservative friends make this type of mistake, and they also make the mistake of confusing taxes with savings. This is similar to the debate on pension funds, which they consider to be a tax. They confuse savings and taxes. Now again, they are confusing the money levied through private copying with taxes.

Here is the problem. The hon. member can present this however he would like but, basically, it is a well known fact that some people will have money and some will not. It is the artists who will not.