Bill C-11 Committee on Feb. 29th, 2012

[Robert D'Eith]

I agree with that 100%. I think the biggest problem is small businesses are just not going to be able to afford to sue every time there's an infringement. It's not a business model for us. We can't afford to spend $5,000 in legal fees to go after $5,000 in damages. It doesn't make any sense. It's the same thing for notice and take-down. Any time there's an infringement now, we have to sue? You're absolutely right that the partners we have, the YouTubes of the world and the Facebooks and the people we work with every day, aren't the problem. We work with them. We have relationships with them.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Sir, there are tools and mechanisms in Bill C-11 to deal with piracy theft, are there not?

[Stuart Johnston]

There is the attempt at tools. We believe those tools will enable isoHunts to get away with impunity and will force Bob to take them to court. And they know that Bob's not going to do it. He's a small-business guy. He does not have the means to do that every single time. So I think they can get away with their business model if Bill C-11 doesn't specifically target those enablers. As Bob says, it's not the YouTubes or the Facebooks of the world. They are great business partners.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

The intent of Bill C-11 is to target those enablers.

[Stuart Johnston]

That is the intent, yes.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I'm going to now go to the consumers' association. I'm going to wade into this issue of digital locks as well, TPMs, technological protection measures

How many consumers do you represent, approximately?

[John Lawford]

Among all the groups there would be several thousand. In Quebec, l'Union des consommateurs has, I believe, 19 Fnacs, Fédération Nationale d'Achats des Cadres. The Consumers Council of Canada has several thousand members. PIAC, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, is much smaller.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Can you speak to how you know consumers are concerned about digital locks? What percentage of consumers are concerned about digital locks? I would suspect a lot of Canadians have no idea what a digital lock is, have never confronted one, have never needed to deal with one in their everyday enjoyment of music or movies, as the case may be.

Help me understand.

[John Lawford]

I think I'll say the opposite and say that consumers are up against TPMs every day. They use their iTunes and they realize that they can't put it on more than five devices because that's what iTunes says they can do with it. They are very familiar with the fact that you can't copy a DVD without breaking a lock, that it's difficult, that you have to go and hunt for software to do so. So I think they are familiar with them.

How do we know whether that's the consumer position? Well, we work in this field every day. We saw the submissions that were made in the consultation between Bill C-61 and Bill C-32. The consumer comments in that, which came straight from the public, we thought were very much in line with the position we've taken today. We haven't had the money to do a survey of consumers on this. We're small organizations with limited budgets.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Is there a particular subset of consumers who are more concerned about this than others?

[John Lawford]

I would say that you'd find there is a subset of consumers who are younger and more Internet-savvy who have more problems with the restrictions than perhaps some of the older users.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

You have 30 seconds or less, please.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Is there anything in Bill C-11 that creates a situation where a consumer pays for something more than once?

[John Lawford]

Yes; I think you could have that situation with the present time and format shifting. Some of the new services that are coming in will ask you to pay for a version that lets you keep it for a specific amount of time, or you can just stream it. For DVDs, again, it's one copy, effectively, so you're not going to get a backup, right? If you want to back it up, you have to buy two copies.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

Thank you, Mr. Lawford and Mr. Braid.

We will now move on to the next round of questions.

Mr. Benskin, you have five minutes.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all for your presentations. There's a lot of interesting diversity at this table today that allows us to kind of debate within the confines, so that's great.

To CARCC, you brought up the subject of artist resale rights. That's something that's new, and I'd just like to get a sense of how the lack of that kind of protection or right in Bill C-11 affects your members.

[Janice Seline]

Resale right is actually very old. France had it in about 1920. It's in many countries around the world.

Let's say an artist I represent had a work resold in Britain. I have a reciprocal agreement with a collective in Britain that collects resale rights; because we have no reciprocity in our legislation, I can't collect the right from the collective in Britain. That's one of the problems.

If you look at the market for resale in Canada, it's rather large. Last November there were three auction sales that dealt with living artists' works. The sales were almost $2 million. If the resale right had been 5%, the artists would have received about $100,000 among them. There weren't a lot of artists. There were probably about 20 or so.

I mean, the market for contemporary art and the resale of contemporary art is becoming much bigger in Canada than it used to be. The artists, of course, are living longer, so people need to benefit from the resale of their works.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

If I understand correctly, in addition to that, we are also basically not in compliance with international practice, in that, because those resale rights exist in other countries, and we are not able to collect for the artists on their behalf, artists in those countries are also losing out. Is that...?

[Janice Seline]

That is correct, yes. We are out of sync with the rest of the world, basically.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

I'll go back to the TPMs and the diverging attitudes towards TPMs. The question has been brought up as to whether or not people pay twice for the same product.

In many cases, with software for computers, you buy a licence. If you want to take your Microsoft Office over to another computer, many times they ask you to pay for a new licence for that computer. We don't hear complaints about that. People accept it as, “Well, I'm putting it on a new computer.”

Why does that differ from the concept of paying for a new licence to put a piece of work on a different device?

[John Lawford]

I follow you, but for software in particular, you can make a backup right now under the Copyright Act. That was the balance that was struck at that time: you get to at least back up. You may have to get a licence for five users or three users or whatever, but at least you have that backup right.

Here what we're trying to do is get the backup rights worked into consumer rights, plus add a couple more—time and format shifting, which are largely to do with music and movies.

Although I see your point, I don't think it's a big issue. I don't think it's a big issue because consumers will be faced with exactly that same problem.

In intellectual terms, as to whether you are doing something hugely crazy with this bill, no, I don't think so. I think you're giving people a chance, if they get around that technological protection measure somehow, to just do what is being done right now with music and movies.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Go ahead, Mr. D'Eith.

[Robert D'Eith]

We're just wanting to get paid once: the first time. That's the biggest problem here. We're not getting paid—at all.

So yes, I appreciate your question about getting paid twice, but the fact is that when mobile devices have 90% non-paid-for material.... Even Steve Jobs said that. He was quite willing to say, in print, that 90% of iPods have non-paid-for material.

We just want to get paid.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

Thank you, Mr. D'Eith and Mr. Benskin.

We'll now move on to Mr. Armstrong for five minutes.