Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, members, for having me to your committee today. I really appreciate the opportunity to engage in a dialogue about the future of Canadian content and the future of content online. My name is Jacob Glick. I'm Google's Canada

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thanks very much for the question. I apologize for not being able to understand the question in French, so--

Canadian Heritage committee  It's not as good as yours, but....

Canadian Heritage committee  You're right. I presented a very rosy picture. There are challenges that the online universe poses and I'm sure you will hear about many of them in the course of your study. One of the most vexing challenges has been that of digital piracy. There are no easy answers to digital

Canadian Heritage committee  Sir, the Google book search project is one that we're very proud of, for a couple of reasons. One is that we have partnered with authors and publishers all around the world to make their content, with their permission, available to users.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. There are two projects. There's the Google publisher program and then there's the Google library program. Together, they're referred to as the Google book search program. The one you're thinking of is that we made copies of books that were in libraries. We made those searcha

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. Thanks very much for those questions.

Canadian Heritage committee  With respect to Google books, maybe it's better if you and I meet individually. I'm happy to go over the project in depth with you.

Canadian Heritage committee  With respect to the broader question of what our digital strategy should look like and what role there is for regulation, I think there is a role for government to play. I don't mean to say there isn't. Maybe as the discussion unfolds we can talk a little more about what that rol

Canadian Heritage committee  Do you mean what the department should be focusing on?

Canadian Heritage committee  I guess part of my message is not to fetishize particular forms of content. Don't fetishize television or movies over online content. The whole world of creative endeavour, professional and otherwise--to go to Ms. Lavallée's question--is a worthy part of Canadian culture. All o

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. I mean, here is my skepticism on a digital strategy; all the kids are talking about it these days and it's all the rage in Ottawa. I wouldn't want to pour cold water on that, but things change so rapidly that if we dally and set up a royal commission or whatever, three years

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, certainly the federal government has a big role to play, and we're all expecting copyright reform in the next few months, as proposed by the industry minister and the heritage minister. This committee and the industry committee will certainly play an important role in that.