Evidence of meeting #8 for Bill C-32 (40th Parliament, 3rd Session) in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair (Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC)) Conservative Gord Brown
Good afternoon, everyone.
We will call to order this eighth meeting of the special legislative committee on Bill C-32.
We have one hour to hear from our witnesses today, and we have two groups of witnesses: as an individual, Douglas Arthur Brown; and from the Canadian Teachers' Federation, Mary-Lou Donnelly and John Staple.
For five minutes, Mr. Brown, you have the floor.
December 13th, 2010 / 3:30 p.m.
Douglas Arthur Brown As an Individual
Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today.
I am a full-time professional writer from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
In Canada, creators of intellectual property number over 140,000. A quarter of us live in rural or small communities--about 36,000, the same number of artists who live in Toronto and Montreal combined. In all, Canada's $46-billion arts and cultural industry employs more than 600,000 Canadians.
A professional book writer usually earns about 10% of the cover price of a book. The remaining 90% is disbursed to others who work in the book publishing industry. Most professional writers in Canada earn less than $20,000 annually from their writing.
I am here before you today to put a face behind some of these statistics.
Some of my income is derived from royalties on book sales, but as time passes, interest in a published work diminishes. Writers also depend upon book launches, festival readings, and school workshops. However, that market is rapidly diminishing. A school board in the district where I live has been asked to cut back 22% of their budget. The first cuts will be music and arts teachers, and of course visiting writers.
Writers can and do apply for Canada Council grants and other grants, but demand always outweighs availability. As writers usually spend between two to four years working on a new book, these grants, if awarded, only go so far.
I also depend upon revenue from Access Copyright, a collective agency that issues licences to authorize the copying of my copyright material. About 85% of Access Copyright's current revenues, what it collects from educational institutions, is at risk if fair dealing for education is incorporated into Bill C-32. So I stand to lose up to 85% of my income from Access Copyright.
Former industry minister John Manley told you last week to have a look at the new education provisions “in five years' time, to see if some of these extreme expectations...have come true, but in the meantime come down, in balance, on the side of education”.
Actually, in the meantime, teachers across Canada will be encouraged by this new fair dealing exception to freely copy big chunks from a book of mine, maybe even a chapter or more, for an entire class without paying Access Copyright--and, through them, me. The collective that represents me and other artists will be forced to cut back drastically and will be less able to represent us effectively. More copying will hurt book sales, as well. With all due respect to Mr. Manley, five years is too long for us to wait while we're being decimated.
In ten years I've had five books published, and for six of those years I've published a literary magazine. The more than a quarter-million dollars of revenue generated by these publications generated tax dollars and infused money into the local community of Cape Breton, benefiting publishers, printers, designers, graphic artists, illustrators, distributors, writers, advertisers, photographers, and booksellers. At a time when rural communities across Canada are experiencing out-migration, my cultural and entrepreneurial contribution has been positive for the economy. And I am only one creator.
Fair dealing for education is not defined in this bill. As other witnesses have mentioned, a Supreme Court ruling lays out a six-part framework for deciding what might be fair. The courts are entitled to consider other factors as well, but the question is to be decided on a case-by-case basis, and protection of an author's financial interest in the work he has created is not a priority in that framework. No one at this point really knows what fair dealing for the purpose of education really means--except more copying without compensation to creators, and more costly lawsuits.
An advantage of living rurally is that one gets to know many of the people who operate local businesses. Several years ago, a local photocopying shop called me because an educator had arrived at the store and wanted to photocopy 100 copies of a children's book that I had written. When told that she couldn't copy the entire book or make so many copies without being in violation of copyright, her response was, “I'll never read another thing he writes. Who does he think he is--Harry Potter?”
Now, what disturbs me is not that the teacher in question didn't realize that Harry Potter was a fictional character, but that she assumed that stealing from me would not matter. Adding education to fair use is an invitation to much more abuse and to protracted legal battles. The practical outcome will be far more copying by teachers, and fewer publishers and writers producing much less material for Canadian readers and Canadian schools. You'll be making my life's work much more difficult to sustain. Please drop the fair dealing exception for education.
Thank you. Merci.
3:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
Thank you very much.
We'll move now to Ms. Donnelly from the Canadian Teachers' Federation.
3:35 p.m.
Mary-Lou Donnelly President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
Thank you very much.
I certainly appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee. I have with me today my colleague John Staple, who is the deputy general secretary of the Canadian Teachers' Federation. Together he and I will be addressing the questions, hopefully.
The federation is the national voice for teachers in Canada on education and related social issues. We represent upwards of 200,000 teachers through 16 provincial and territorial teacher organizations across the country.
Our brief to the committee we hope puts the views of Canadian teachers on elements of Bill C-32 clearly in perspective. As indicated in the introduction section, we have struggled with issues related to the balance that we believe needs to be struck between the rights of creators and the need of access by students and teachers to educational material.
Our own policy reflects the fact that we have been attempting to address that balance. We've been following attempts to amend the Copyright Act for many years. We and our partners in Canada's education community have been consistent in our approach on what is important for education over that time.
CTF supports Bill C-32 because it is a fair and balanced approach for education. Two key sections are of great importance to us. They are the education or Internet amendments, depending on your choice of words, which is proposed section 30.04, and the addition of education to the list of purposes for which fair dealing is available, proposed section 29.
The Internet amendment is important because the current copyright law is not clear about the extent to which teachers, students, and other educational users can legally engage in routine classroom activities such as downloading, saving, or sharing text, images, or videos that are publicly available on the Internet.
The amendment contained in proposed section 30.04 deals only with publicly available material. That is material posted on the Internet by the copyright owner without password protection or other technical restrictions on access or use. Most of this material is posted with the intention that it be copied and shared by members of the public. It is publicly available for anyone who wants to use it.
The problem is that current copyright law may not protect schools, teachers, and students when they are making routine educational uses of this publicly available material. Educational institutions and the teachers, students, and staff who work in them use the Internet in unique ways that may infringe copyright, even though many individual uses of the same material might be allowed under the Copyright Act.
Examples of the kind of educational use that is surrounded by legal uncertainty include making multiple copies of a work such as a photograph or an article found on the Internet for all students in a class; playing an online video for students in a classroom; and posting an item from the Internet on a class website. We welcome and support proposed section 30.04, and know that it will provide legal clarity about the use of publicly available Internet material for educational purposes.
The notion of adding additional purposes to the fair dealing provision has been discussed in the copyright reform process as a balanced method of providing access to works without harming copyright owners, because the dealing must meet a fairness test for the provision to apply. CTF supports the amendment to add education to the list, but believes, at the same time, that it does not go far enough. That is why our brief indicates strong support for the passage of the amendment adding education to the list of fair dealing purposes, and suggests a further amendment clarifying that making multiple copies for a class of students is fair dealing.
Two other issues referenced in our brief impact on the access to learning materials. They are the requirements to destroy course material 30 days after final examinations and the amendments respecting technological measures. We would support an amendment that deletes the requirement to destroy online course material 30 days after the final course evaluations, and we would support an amendment to proposed section 41 that would permit users to circumvent technological protection measures in situations where the use of the material would not be an infringement of copyright.
Thank you. We look forward to your questions.
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
Thank you very much.
We will go to the first round of questions.
From the Liberal Party, for seven minutes, Mr. Rodriguez.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Thank you, Chair.
Good afternoon and welcome.
Ms. Donnelly, did you say that one should be able to make several copies of books for a class? Is that what you said?
3:40 p.m.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
In terms of copyright of multiple copies for a class, yes, we would like clarification on that in the act.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
3:40 p.m.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
Yes. We would like a further amendment to that.
3:40 p.m.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
So that we can make multiple copies--of an article off the Internet, for example--for a class.
John, do you want to add something further?
3:40 p.m.
John Staple Deputy Secretary General, Canadian Teachers' Federation
Sure.
The courts have established in a recent case that “multiple copies” is not fair dealing. We are suggesting that if education is to be added to the list for fair dealing, then it would make sense to clarify that issue about whether or not multiple copies is in fact fair dealing within the legislation.
To go back to what you said, we're not suggesting we'd make multiple copies of books. Teachers are not in the habit of copying books, full works; they're more in the habit of copying small extracts, one or two pages, two to three pages of works, but not copying full texts. That would not be fair dealing.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Fine.
Mr. Brown is concerned that he and his colleagues will lose income. Are you concerned about that? Do you think he has no need for concern and that including education as an exception will have no impact in terms of income loss?
Should he be worried?
3:40 p.m.
Deputy Secretary General, Canadian Teachers' Federation
We're concerned about his income as well. That's one of the dilemmas we have in attempting to find a balance between what we think is right for the creators and what we think is necessary for education and the access of students and teachers to material. So we have that concern as well.
I think sometimes when we're talking about fair dealing and we're talking about photocopying and we're talking about making copies of work from texts or from other works, printed or not, we tend to get a little confused about the game that's at play.
Mr. Brown referenced Access Copyright and the photocopying arrangement between school boards and ministries of education and that group. What happens within that is there's a set rate for students to pay, or school boards or ministries to pay on behalf of students, for the amount of copying that is done within the amount set by Copyright Canada. There was a study done in 2005-06 by Access Copyright to determine the amount of copying that teachers do in schools. It was for the purpose of helping Copyright Canada make the decision—
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
3:45 p.m.
Deputy Secretary General, Canadian Teachers' Federation
Okay. I'll try to be very quick.
The study found that teachers, on average, copy 60 pages per student per year. It's difficult to copy a text with just that many pages.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
No, sorry, I don't have much time.
When I was a young boy in grade school, and even in high school, we all had books. We borrowed them and we had to cover them, take care of them, and hand them in at the end of the year. Is that still the case? Is there still one book per student for various subject matters?
3:45 p.m.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
It depends on the course.
For example, some courses may have textbooks involved, but more and more teachers do get away from textbooks, depending on their course. One, the information is changing so rapidly, and two, book budgets in school boards have declined very much so because we have access to other information--the Internet, of course, being one of them, and all kinds of different access to information. Fewer courses will have textbooks associated with them because of that rapid change in education, in knowledge.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Then it's only logical to assume that the creators, the individuals who write these books for the schools, suffer losses of income. Are you not concerned that this will further jeopardize their situation, that this will lead to a loss in their income?
3:45 p.m.
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
No, not at all; we support the right for creators to have the income and to be compensated fairly. Absolutely we support that.
We do not support copying entire works at all. I'm actually quite surprised by the example that Mr. Brown gave. Although I'm sure things like that may have happened, it would be very unusual for a teacher to copy an entire book for an entire class. Quite frankly, the copying budget would just not be there for an individual teacher to have that.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Okay, thank you.
I'll wrap up with you, Mr. Brown. You gave us a very concrete example. Personally what concerns me—and you will see this through my questions—is that this opening, this exception for education, will leave the impression that one may copy just about anything for almost nothing.
I'm sure you have discussed this with your colleagues and with individuals from your sector. What do you and your colleagues think the actual impact of including education in...?