This bill was last introduced in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session, which ended in March 2011.
Tony Clement Conservative
In committee (House), as of Nov. 5, 2010
(This bill did not become law.)
This is from the published bill.
This enactment amends the Copyright Act to
(a) update the rights and protections of copyright owners to better address the challenges and opportunities of the Internet, so as to be in line with international standards;
(b) clarify Internet service providers’ liability and make the enabling of online copyright infringement itself an infringement of copyright;
(c) permit businesses, educators and libraries to make greater use of copyright material in digital form;
(d) allow educators and students to make greater use of copyright material;
(e) permit certain uses of copyright material by consumers;
(f) give photographers the same rights as other creators;
(g) ensure that it remains technologically neutral; and
(h) mandate its review by Parliament every five years.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
One of the things Bill C-32 certainly endeavours to do is to bring Canada's copyright laws in line with the international context, in line with our international partners.
When you're selling Canadian products around the world, why is that important to your industry?
February 1st, 2011 / 12:20 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer, Canadian Media Production Association
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to meet with you today.
The CMPA represents the interests of almost 400 companies engaged in the production and distribution of English-language television programs, feature films, and interactive media productions in all regions of Canada. In 2009-10, the industry was responsible for over $3.8 billion in production volume and the creation of over 90,000 jobs.
Our members produce Degrassi, Corner Gas, The Rick Mercer Report, and This Hour has 22 Minutes, to name a few. Our entire industry is also on tenterhooks to see whether Barney's Version and Incendies--both independently produced films--take home Oscars later this month at the Academy Awards.
As an association whose members are both owners and users of copyright, we recognize that copyright reform involves an exceptionally delicate balancing act. We will limit our remarks to five key issues that we believe are key to getting the balance right.
First, the CMPA fully supports the TPM provisions of Bill C-32. Protection for TPMs is critical to ensuring choice for both creators and consumers in the digital marketplace. TPMs enable independent producers to experiment with different business and content delivery models. They also provide a vehicle for maximizing the range of content and services available to consumers.
Where TPMs are overused or misused, consumers can and do respond by allocating their entertainment dollars elsewhere. But without them, the digital marketplace risks becoming a digital desert where less and less high-quality, professionally produced Canadian content gets made. This would be a huge loss, not only for Canadians but for consumers and citizens, and also for international audiences who love the content our members produce.
Second, we were very pleased to see that parody and satire would be added as protected activities under the fair dealing exemption. This would bring an end to the current uncertainty regarding parody and satire in Canadian copyright law, which can have a chilling effect on free speech, including political speech.
We're confident that all members of Parliament would support an amendment that would give Rick Mercer an even freer reign than he has already.
Reynolds.
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
We will call this ninth meeting of the special Legislative Committee on Bill C-32 to order.
We have two witnesses from the same organization, John Barrack and Reynolds Mastin. I believe, Mr. Barrack, you're going to speak. Is that correct?
Marc Garneau Liberal Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC
Thank you.
I believe Monsieur Pineau brought up
the YouTube issue,
the issue of so-called mashups and the provisions in the current proposed Bill C-32. I would like to know your position on this. Would you prefer there not be an exemption for mashups, or would you be happy if the exception was clearly defined so it actually said what was legal and what was not legal?
First of all, I think the ones that we support I have mentioned in my presentation, and I will find the page to go back to that. I'm not going to be specific about the people who come here and say they're very happy with the bill and say thank you and pass it tomorrow because it's very urgent. I think you have the list from them. We're saying, okay, it suits them and it's no skin off our nose. It's fine. You will get the list from them.
From us, I think some Bill C-32 elements are positive: distribution rights, the reproduction and moral rights for performers, the length of the protection of sound recordings, and the rights to photographers. The problem is that with the exemptions, many of these rights are undermined on the next page. That's the problem. You give rights to photographers and then you put them in jeopardy through the exemptions that you grant on the other side. It's...what's the expression?
I completely agree with that and about the principle. That is why this is a fallback position for us rather than saying that they cannot remove it because, politically, it is motherhood and apple pie. They should at least change it to soften the impact.
The problem is that impacts are mixed in Bill C-32. For example, in a different context, there can be an exemption for something else. When we look at it in this way, we have to say that if you want the bill to be passed, you have to remove all that, because it will be extremely harmful.
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
So do you want us to pass Bill C-32 in its current form?
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you very much.
Mr. Pineau, you have indicated in your presentation that the major problem with Bill C-32 is that it fails to recognize the existence of two very different kinds of markets. You have said that the bill proposes the same solutions for both markets. When I was reading that, I told myself that it really is a key aspect. It really is a question about striking a balance between creators and broadcasters. And we learned that this had been the case for all legislation on copyright.
You are saying that creators are the injured party. You used the example of the digital lock. Could you tell us more about the imbalance you have noticed, especially in terms of digital locks? We see very clearly that the bill is certainly not built around remuneration for artists. In fact, as you also mentioned, they are being deprived of sources of income.
We are also under the impression that the people who designed the bill think that families are going to buy two identical CDs or they will download things twice if there's a digital lock. I prefer not to start labelling this way of seeing things, but let's just say that it's completely ridiculous.
For three and a half months, the Canadian Conference of the Arts has been working with its members and other people around the table on this issue. We have been trying to reach common ground. What you see on the table are our common positions on what needs to be done to Bill C-32. Our members, who are experts in various fields, will be making more specific proposals.
Marvin Dolgay Vice-Chair, President of Screen Composers Guild of Canada, Creators' Copyright Coalition
Thank you, Bill, and good morning to everybody.
I earn my living solely as a creator. I'm a musician and a screen composer. Like the vast majority of my colleagues, I'm not a big star, I'm not a household name, I have no T-shirts to sell, nobody pays big ticket prices to see me, and there are no product endorsements in my future.
In actuality, we make our primary living from secondary income streams. I'm a member of SOCAN, SODRAC, CFM, and ACTRA. These collectives efficiently distribute the revenues collected from our rights to us. Be aware that even with all these revenue streams, none of these income sources provide a decent living on their own. We rely on the strength of our combined collectives.
Bill C-32, as written, is meant to modernize consumers' access and use of copyright-protected works. Let me be clear: we want the consumer to consume our works. That is how a successful business model works. However, our ability to make a living could be stripped away with Bill C-32's pages of exceptions, while others are making money from our content.
YouTube generates money from content, but the bill creates an exception so we do not get paid. Broadcasters generate money from content, but the bill creates an exception, so we lose our income from broadcast mechanicals. Digital recording devices generate money from the very existence and essence of our content, but the bill creates an exception that effectively eliminates our private copying royalty income. Again, we do not get paid. Educators value and use our content in the classroom, but, again, we do not get paid. This is not balance.
What my colleagues and I need is simple. We need to be treated like any other legitimate business sector that creates a product of value. We want our end users to have access to our work and we need to be paid accordingly for its consumption. I'm not a lawyer, a lobbyist, a politician, or a bureaucrat. I'm not an educator, a broadcast or ISP executive or employee, but if I were, there would be no question that I would be paid for my work.
We are very small businesses, and in order to survive we must be allowed to have the tools to receive payment for the success of our inventory.
Mr. Freeman and I look forward to answering any of your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Marvin Dolgay and I are representing the Creators' Copyright Coalition. Mr. Dolgay is a musician and composer and the president of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada. He's one of Canada's leading composers of music for film and television. He's also the vice-chair of the CCC.
I'm Bill Freeman. I'm a former chair of The Writers' Union of Canada, and I'm the chair of the Creators' Copyright Coalition. I write books for children, adult non-fiction, plays, and documentary film scripts.
We're here representing the CCC, an organization of 17 of the major creative groups, which represent about 100,000 creators.
I understand that you have received our broader brief. I'm not going to go into that in detail. I'm just going to make some additional comments.
When Canadians think of creators, they usually think of the rich and famous, but Marvin and I are much more typical. Like small business people, we earn our living from different sources. We do a little better than most, but surveys show that incomes of creators are low, somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 per annum, from their creative works. Many have alternate jobs. That's how they support themselves and their families.
Creators believe that copyright legislation should be designed to encourage creation. Writers, musicians, visual artists, actors, and other creators are on the very cusp of the digital revolution, and that revolution should stimulate a flurry of new creations. But if exceptions are created in the Copyright Act so that there's no protection for their work, it could become a dead zone for professional creators, because they cannot earn a living from the material distributed on the Internet. At the moment, we fear that Bill C-32 will create that dead zone.
Let me make three general points about Bill C-32. First, every creator we know about wants his or her works to be widely distributed. We don't want it locked up. That's why they've gone to such effort, after all, and the pain, to create their works. But they do want to be paid for what they do. The principle guiding the act should be payment for use. It's as simple as that. Bill C-32 goes in the opposite direction in some cases by making a host of new exceptions, and those exceptions will be damaging to many creators.
Second, Bill C-32, frankly, is filled with confusion. We've been told by lawyers that it's overly broad and unclear in many places and will lead to complicated litigation that will cost millions of dollars and will take years to resolve. That's probably the worst thing you can do, because creators will have to pay for their share of that litigation. All that will happen is that you'll enrich the lawyers, and it'll come out of our pocketbooks.
Third, the Internet has changed the business model for almost every creator. The secondary use of material--that is, the chapter of a novel excerpted in a public school or the song on the radio or the audiovisual clip--is increasingly how works are being distributed today. There's nothing wrong with that. It's collective societies, though, who manage those secondary rights for creators, and the legislation, we feel, should strengthen the collective society. Bill C-32, in many instances, does just the opposite. It weakens SOCAN, certainly Access Copyright, and all the other collective societies that manage rights.
I'm going to ask Marvin to make some comments on the impact of Bill C-32.
Yes, I will do that.
I'll just point out that the current bill erases $126 million in current revenue for artists with all the exceptions, and that's a major blow to those people.
This bill fails to provide a clear, predictable framework for the rights of creators and for the users of these rights. As the Quebec Bar Association has aptly pointed out, the long list of new, expanded and often ill-defined exceptions will create uncertainty in the marketplace.
There is at the end of this presentation something you can ask me questions about. It is the list of the main areas to amend in Bill C-32.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
My name Alain Pineau and I'm the national director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts.
I will jump immediately to the second paragraph.
When it comes to copyright, we at the CCA have members who are rights holders and members who are rights users. So we are quite sensitive to the position you may find yourselves in as lawmakers when it comes to this prickly pear.
It is from the broad and unique perspective of the Canadian Conference of the Arts that I come here to comment on Bill C-32. I will concentrate on the big picture and let our member organizations propose specific amendments to ensure the Copyright Act really works for the benefit of the Canadian creative economy, of Canadian consumers and, obviously, of our artists and creators who should be at the centre of our preoccupations.
Copyright is a key piece of any national digital strategy and should be one of the cornerstones on which Canada defines its place in the global knowledge economy. Failure to amend the legislation and salvage C-32's more positive provisions could severely compromise Canada’s cultural and economic performance.
I am going to skip the next two paragraphs.
Let me start with the positive.
First, we all agree that it is high time that Canada update its Copyright Act, and we thank the government for attempting once again to bring this important piece of legislation up to date and in line with our international obligations. We share the urgency, but not at any cost.
Second, it is clear that Bill C-32 satisfies a number of people, particularly in the corporate world and the entertainment, software, recording, and cinematographic industries. Our members rejoice that those components of the cultural sector are satisfied with the bill, so I am not here to dispute the lists of happy campers, which Mr. Del Mastro has quoted often, both in the House and here, but I will point to the still longer list of people for whom Bill C-32, as it now stands, is hurtful.
Third, on the positive side, Bill C-32 contains elements that are viewed as positive by artists, creators, and cultural workers in general. I refer here to the distribution right, the reproduction and moral rights for performers, the length of protection of sound recordings, and the rights to photographers.
Let me now move to the negative aspects of Bill C-32. The bill's main flaw is that it fails to recognize the existence of at least two very different kinds of markets. The bill proposes a one-size-fits-all approach, which clearly satisfies the big players and all international company interests but which is far less important to the majority of Canadian artists.
The proponents of the bill argue that it gives artists and creators the tools necessary to protect and monetize their work and develop new markets: they simply have to put digital locks on their works and resort to the justice system to have their rights respected. Locks trump exceptions, which has Professor Geist up in arms and does not satisfy the education community either.
But since locks are not an option for most artists and individual content creators, the bill is rightly perceived by them as a de facto expropriation of their property rights without compensation.
The lock-litigation approach is disconnected from the realities of life of most Canadian artists and creators. The world of most Canadian artists is not that of Ubisoft or that of CRIA. Forty-two per cent of Canadian artists are self-employed. They don't have the resources to monitor Internet and wireless users to see if they are infringing their property rights. Because they are busy creating their art and developing new business models that seize upon the opportunities of direct access to their audiences, they don't have the time or financial resources to launch complicated court cases against those who illegally copy their work, whether for commercial or non-commercial use.
The unprecedented YouTube exception and the broad fair dealing purposes included in C-32 turn current copyright law on its head by signalling to users that they can infringe copyright as much as they want until someone sues them for damages. Even these are limited by the bill in such a way as to favour intentional infringement. To have their rights respected, the creator, publisher or producer must demonstrate that the market for their works has been significantly damaged, a notoriously difficult burden of proof.
The challenges they may face are perfectly illustrated by the case of Claude Robinson, who has been in litigation for the past 15 years to defend rights, which this bill will jeopardize further if not amended.
For those of you who are not familiar with Claude Robinson's case, I've added a summary at the end of this presentation, which of course I will not read.
The precarious situation of self-employed artists was recognized by a previous Conservative government when it adopted the Status of the Artist Act in 1992. This act created the possibility for individual artists and self-employed creators to be represented by collectives.
In order to facilitate access to their works and ensure proper compensation, over the past 20 years artists have established a number of organizations responsible for collecting and distributing royalties to artists and for defending their interests in front of regulatory bodies and tribunals. Collective societies provide consumers with easy access to copyright-protected content and rights holders with efficient management for many uses of their works, replacing numerous uneconomic, low-value transactions between creators and consumers, for their mutual benefit.
One of the core problems--
The Chair (Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC)) Conservative Gord Brown
Good morning, everyone.
We're going to call this ninth meeting of the special Legislative Committee on Bill C-32 to order.
I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year, now that we're back in action, moving this bill through the legislative process.
As part of that, we now have a new clerk, so I'd like to introduce to the committee our new clerk, Andrew Chaplin. Welcome, Andrew.
For the first hour we have a number of witnesses. We have Alain Pineau from the Canadian Conference of the Arts. We have Bill Freeman from the Creators' Copyright Coalition, as well as Marvin Dolgay, president of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada.
We will have five minutes from each of our witnesses and then we'll start the questions around the table.
Mr. Pineau....
January 31st, 2011 / 4:55 p.m.
Director General, Intellectual Property and Services Trade Policy Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Some of our major trading partners, the United States and the European Union, for example, have, for a number of years, been concerned that Canada's domestic framework in this area doesn't meet international best practice and could be improved. That is one of the rationales for moving forward on a number of fronts on intellectual property. The international enforcement aspects of moving forward, Bill C-32 and other initiatives, are part of the domestic response to those kinds of concerns from trading partners. So, yes, they do exist.