Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. I need two points of clarification.

Canadian Heritage committee  You asked two questions there. The first question is about our digital culture and--

Canadian Heritage committee  When you create an exception where a copyright holder, a user, a rights holder, is not paid for the use of the work, I think you need to be sure that you create parameters on what the use is, because you are encroaching on someone's ability to be compensated for the use of the work.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, the market has been able to put in place a licence that doesn't require that. The market can do that. Rights holders can choose how they want to license their work. The point is that when rights holders are given the opportunity to put business models in place, they tend to meet the user needs in a more efficient way and are able to adapt as the user needs adapt as well.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. That's precisely the difference between fair dealing in Canada and fair use in the United States.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, that should be the case.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think there would indeed be a lot of lawsuits. Until there have been a lot of lawsuits, we won't absolutely know where copyright ends and fair dealing begins. The only way to determine that would be through the courts. That would be their responsibility. That would take tens of years and it will never be finally resolved.

Canadian Heritage committee  Indeed.

Canadian Heritage committee  I mentioned a situation we are currently experiencing. This is not fair use in the American sense. Our framework is that of Canadian fair dealing. Despite the fact that the dealing list is limited in Canada, the concept of equity must be determined on a case-by-case basis. We are currently conducting a judicial review of a decision by the Copyright Commission.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll give you a somewhat more concrete example. For example, in the United States, you may have heard of the Google project to digitize all literary works in the world. They have somewhat limited the agreement they signed, but they want to digitize all literary works. They take the works, they copy them, they digitize them and subsequently make them searchable so that people can find them on the Internet.

Canadian Heritage committee  First, I think there's a difference between flexibility and neutrality of the legislation with regard to technology. Those are two completely different things. I think that people often confuse the two and believe that we need flexibility to adapt to everything that might arise and that we can't predict.

Canadian Heritage committee  I will start. Following me will be Danièle Simpson, and then Glenn Rollans, followed by Marie-Louise Nadeau, and then André Cornellier. We will try to keep it at 10 minutes or less. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. My name is Roanie Levy.