Industry committee  Keep in mind there's a different copyright in a musical composition, meaning the song itself and the sound recording of the composition. Sound recordings have gone to 70 years. Musical compositions in Canada are still life plus 50. I'll give you a concrete example. A composer whose name was Bert Berns wrote Twist and Shout.

Industry committee  Yes, absolutely.

Industry committee  Well, as a business owner you need to know. In order to make projections, if you're running a business, it's fundamental that you know what the value of your product is. It's unbelievable to me that it takes so long to get these decisions made. If anything, it should be flipped on its head, and you should know, for the next five years, that the rates are going to be x, and you could, at that point, make projections of what that's going to mean for your business.

Industry committee  I'll give you a concrete example. There was a decision a few years ago with respect to the right of communication, and whether a download involved a public performance. At any rate, there was a Supreme Court decision that meant money that was being held by SOCAN, which is a collective that represents composers and creators in Canada.... $20 million was repaid to Apple.

Industry committee  I cannot say because that is not my specialty, but I am sure there are experts who could tell you. What I can say is that it makes no sense.

Industry committee  Definitely. I think that is well known. Mr. Lavallée is perhaps in a better position to comment on this. The tariffs paid to composers for the use of their songs are much lower, proportionally speaking. I think they are 50% higher in the United States than what is paid here for the same usage.

Industry committee  First of all, I think it lacks the resources, so the budgets have to be reviewed. Next, the rules could be amended to require decisions to be made more quickly. Certain collectives have to conclude an agreement, even when they are negotiating directly with a stakeholder, and in certain cases, especially as to the right to communication, they have to go back and have the agreement approved by the Copyright Board, which causes a further delay.

Industry committee  Yes. Okay.

Industry committee  I'll give you an example. If you introduce an exception for user-generated content because people want to publish cat videos and then you've got an entity that's making billions of dollars because eyeballs have gravitated this way, basically what the exception does from a collective industry kind of situation is collectively we've lost the ability to negotiate that as a business model, because it's become a business model.

Industry committee  Basically, the copyright rules are different. The details of copyright law are different in the U.S. If you're negotiating a deal under U.S. jurisdiction, you're going to be following U.S. copyright law. So it's essentially what I'm saying. These are nuances that have allowed us to generate royalties for this particular type of royalty, which is generating, again, not as much as it should, but it's something, whereas in Canada that basically didn't exist for many years.

Industry committee  Well, I can tell you just off the top of my head. It's like six figures of revenue that we get from the U.S. and it's zero in Canada, on an annual basis.

Industry committee  Well, I can get you some figures.

Industry committee  Okay.

Industry committee  Well, if I can flip the question around, I do have a lot of people I talk to in the United States and they wonder what the situation is in Canada. The ones who understand the details of copyright are surprised at.... I'll give you an example. The U.S. copyright board just announced what the tariffs are going to be for online streaming for the part that goes to publishers for the compositions for the next five years.

Industry committee  Yes, absolutely. Again, all these exceptions collectively put the creators and their representatives in a poor negotiating position when you're dealing with multi-billion dollar companies. They are tough negotiators. That's probably a polite way to put it. It's tough to be negotiating with such a large entity when at the best of times we're relatively small players in the greater scheme of things.