Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for having us.
The Copyright Act must be amended. There can be no doubt about that. It is obsolete. It no longer meets Canada's international obligations and has not been adapted to the digital universe.
However, there are a number of elements in Bill C-32 that do not meet stated objectives or comply with the international treaties that Canada has signed. In addition, Bill C-32 generally runs counter to social choices made in the past, including the decision to promote collective management in order to guarantee creators a right to compensation for the uses made of their works.
Today, by adding exceptions without providing for a right to compensation, and by absolving certain players in the new economy of all responsibility to the detriment of creators, Bill C-32 runs counter to the modern orientations that Canada has adopted in the field of copyright.
Bill C-32 creates new exemptions for private copying. I will limit myself to the possibility for users to make private copies for later listening or viewing. The problem with this new exemption is that the numerous conditions for its implementation cannot readily be verified. How could a rights holder determine whether a user has retained the copy solely for the time necessary to watch the program at a better time? And what does "the time necessary" mean? A week, a month or a year? It's not defined.
It will clearly be impossible to verify whether the conditions of the exemption are met. Consequently, rights holders will be able to exercise no control over copies made by users, and, in actual fact, consumers will ultimately do what they want.
The bill provides for no compensation for rights holders whose works, performances and sound recordings are produced in that manner. And yet it would have been possible to expand the private copying system to include audiovisual copying as is the case in France.
Another stumbling block in Bill C-32 is the issue of technical protection measures and recourse offered to rights holders. Bill C-32 contains provisions prohibiting the circumvention of technical protection measures.
However, this opportunity for rights holders to put these measures in place is quite theoretical, in the case of performers, because they are not the ones who make the media incorporating their performances available to the public.
I would also like to emphasize that virtually none of the works that have been produced to date are equipped with these mechanisms or locks. And virtually all works circulate on the net through illegal downloading networks. This therefore means that it will never be possible to protect those works, which nevertheless enjoy immense popularity.
Bill C-32 does not come close to creating the necessary incentives for these TPMs to be effective in Canada. Most rights holders cannot afford to institute proceedings to collect to the paltry sums provided for under Bill C-32.
Another matter addressed by Bill C-32 is Internet service providers and their obligations with regard to copyright violations. The proposed amendments provide for a "notice and notice" system rather than a "notice and withdrawal" system that would require the service provider to withdraw the material in violation of copyright, as in the United States, for example.
The creation of this kind of obligation would have given rights holders real means to put a stop to the violations, and to do so quickly, thus limiting the economic damage caused. Internet service providers are absolved of responsibility for copyright violations that are committed on their networks, whereas they benefit from them to a large degree.
In another connection, Bill C-32 introduces new rights for performers. Although the UDA approves these additions, it deplores the fact that they are applied only in cases where the performance is fixed in a sound recording.
Consequently, performers whose performances are fixed in a medium including a visual aspect, such as music DVDs and digital audio files containing videoclips, do not enjoy the exclusive right of reproduction or other rights created by Bill C-32. This distinction is unfair and serves no purpose.
Furthermore, with regard to these new rights, Parliament should have ensured that the rights initially granted to performers could actually benefit them by providing that those rights could not be assigned before they were even created by the act.
The utility of this kind of transitional provision is not merely theoretical. There are practices in the industry whereby producers request that performers assign all copyright over their performances.
Lastly, Bill C-32 grants moral rights to performers, a fact that the UDA is very pleased about. However, we note that the moral right of a performer is recognized only where the performer's performance is given live and fixed in a sound recording.
It follows that artists whose performances are included in an audiovisual or cinematographic work will not enjoy a moral right over that performance.
The UDA notes that Bill C-32 provides that performers may be led to waive their moral rights, which poses a serious problem from the standpoint of Quebec's civil law.
In conclusion, I would say that, unless it undergoes significant amendments, Bill C-32 should be abandoned. While it claims to be modern and to favour creators, it in fact favours the users and businesses that benefit from their work.
Thank you.
