Bill C-32 (Historical)

Copyright Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Copyright Act

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.

Economic Negotiations with the European Union

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Chair, unfortunately, the NDP member who just spoke is right. I said “unfortunately” because, to this point, the Conservatives have given no indication that they like the arts, culture and artists.

On November 30, 120 of the most famous, symbolic and legendary Quebec artists came to meet with Conservative members on Parliament Hill. Luc Plamondon, Robert Charlebois, Michel Rivard, Ariane Moffatt, Louise Forestier and the members of Mes aïeux and Cowboys fringants were there. Who met with them? Not one Conservative member met with them. Zero, net, none.

These are some of our most legendary artists. Usually, someone who likes artists will meet with them, especially when they are generous enough to travel to attend a meeting. They all spoke to us; we were at the same table. We went from table to table and they talked about themselves. Meeting so many great Quebec artists, many of whom are stars on the international stage, was truly an extraordinary experience.

They spoke against Bill C-32, which runs counter to artists' interests. We cannot understand why the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages defends industry at the expense of artists, and takes away $74 million in revenue per year. That makes absolutely no sense.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I just have one question for Mr. Brown.

You said the following in your opening statement:

About 85% of Access Copyright's current revenues...is at risk if “fair dealing for education” is incorporated into Bill C-32. So, I stand to lose up to 85% of my income from Access Copyright.

Now, 85% is a very specific number.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much.

Are there any parts of Bill C-32, on copyright, that you like?

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.

My question is for Mr. Brown. If Bill C-32 is passed, you say that you will lose 85% of your income. On the other hand, the representatives from the Canadian Teachers' Federation beside you say that they don't want to pay less. What exactly they do want is not easy to understand. They say that they want to pay copyright fees and that income won't go down. In that case, how do you explain the 85% reduction? I still don't understand their position.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Well, they're restrictive depending on your point of view. You have to pay for certain materials.

With Bill C-32 there is the proposed exemption of education, which I understand you favour.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

I'm still not quite there, though, in terms of understanding it. You can make things very clear--things are very clear at the moment--without Bill C-32. They're clear.

But as I understand it--

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

It's against the law now and it will be against the law once Bill C-32 is passed. I just want to make that clear.

I want to move on to some of the exciting things that I think Bill C-32 will do. I see Bill C-32 as allowing education to really roll into the classroom some of the latest technology. Can you talk a little about how teachers are using electronic boards and so forth, and how this can be brought in to really bring the educational experience for our students up to date?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay, thank you.

Do you see anything changing, moving forward? Can you imagine a time, moving forward, upon the passage of Bill C-32, with education as an included item under fair dealing, when school boards would encourage teachers to make copies of entire works and assume that this would be fair dealing?

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Brown, I would like to hear your comments on the fact that if Bill C-32 were adopted as it stands, you would suffer an 85% loss in your income from Access Copyright.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes, however there are already websites that indicate that their documents can be used. Are you not satisfied with that? Under Bill C-32, even the logo, that famous copyright C, will not be respected. It seems to me that if one respects copyright, then one must even respect that when the document in question is on the Internet, students should be directed to websites that contain documents that can be copied. They must not be taught that just because a document is on the Internet it's free and that intellectual property doesn't belong to anyone.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

You're still requesting that the legislation be changed to include education under Bill C-32. Earlier I heard you refer to Internet documents for example. Copyright fees apply to Internet documents as well. You know, we have to teach youth that authors have rights and that intellectual property, whether it be in the shape of a written paper, a photocopy, or an Internet document or a projection on the wall, is subject to copyright fees. Intellectual property belongs to the content creator and it has to be respected and paid for.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

If Bill C-32 is passed, will you continue to pay it?

[Mary-Lou Donnelly, President, Canadian Teachers' Federation]

Thank you very much.

I certainly appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee. I have with me today my colleague John Staple, who is the deputy general secretary of the Canadian Teachers' Federation. Together he and I will be addressing the questions, hopefully.

The federation is the national voice for teachers in Canada on education and related social issues. We represent upwards of 200,000 teachers through 16 provincial and territorial teacher organizations across the country.

Our brief to the committee we hope puts the views of Canadian teachers on elements of Bill C-32 clearly in perspective. As indicated in the introduction section, we have struggled with issues related to the balance that we believe needs to be struck between the rights of creators and the need of access by students and teachers to educational material.

Our own policy reflects the fact that we have been attempting to address that balance. We've been following attempts to amend the Copyright Act for many years. We and our partners in Canada's education community have been consistent in our approach on what is important for education over that time.

CTF supports Bill C-32 because it is a fair and balanced approach for education. Two key sections are of great importance to us. They are the education or Internet amendments, depending on your choice of words, which is proposed section 30.04, and the addition of education to the list of purposes for which fair dealing is available, proposed section 29.

The Internet amendment is important because the current copyright law is not clear about the extent to which teachers, students, and other educational users can legally engage in routine classroom activities such as downloading, saving, or sharing text, images, or videos that are publicly available on the Internet.

The amendment contained in proposed section 30.04 deals only with publicly available material. That is material posted on the Internet by the copyright owner without password protection or other technical restrictions on access or use. Most of this material is posted with the intention that it be copied and shared by members of the public. It is publicly available for anyone who wants to use it.

The problem is that current copyright law may not protect schools, teachers, and students when they are making routine educational uses of this publicly available material. Educational institutions and the teachers, students, and staff who work in them use the Internet in unique ways that may infringe copyright, even though many individual uses of the same material might be allowed under the Copyright Act.

Examples of the kind of educational use that is surrounded by legal uncertainty include making multiple copies of a work such as a photograph or an article found on the Internet for all students in a class; playing an online video for students in a classroom; and posting an item from the Internet on a class website. We welcome and support proposed section 30.04, and know that it will provide legal clarity about the use of publicly available Internet material for educational purposes.

The notion of adding additional purposes to the fair dealing provision has been discussed in the copyright reform process as a balanced method of providing access to works without harming copyright owners, because the dealing must meet a fairness test for the provision to apply. CTF supports the amendment to add education to the list, but believes, at the same time, that it does not go far enough. That is why our brief indicates strong support for the passage of the amendment adding education to the list of fair dealing purposes, and suggests a further amendment clarifying that making multiple copies for a class of students is fair dealing.

Two other issues referenced in our brief impact on the access to learning materials. They are the requirements to destroy course material 30 days after final examinations and the amendments respecting technological measures. We would support an amendment that deletes the requirement to destroy online course material 30 days after the final course evaluations, and we would support an amendment to proposed section 41 that would permit users to circumvent technological protection measures in situations where the use of the material would not be an infringement of copyright.

Thank you. We look forward to your questions.

[Douglas Arthur Brown, As an Individual]

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today.

I am a full-time professional writer from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

In Canada, creators of intellectual property number over 140,000. A quarter of us live in rural or small communities--about 36,000, the same number of artists who live in Toronto and Montreal combined. In all, Canada's $46-billion arts and cultural industry employs more than 600,000 Canadians.

A professional book writer usually earns about 10% of the cover price of a book. The remaining 90% is disbursed to others who work in the book publishing industry. Most professional writers in Canada earn less than $20,000 annually from their writing.

I am here before you today to put a face behind some of these statistics.

Some of my income is derived from royalties on book sales, but as time passes, interest in a published work diminishes. Writers also depend upon book launches, festival readings, and school workshops. However, that market is rapidly diminishing. A school board in the district where I live has been asked to cut back 22% of their budget. The first cuts will be music and arts teachers, and of course visiting writers.

Writers can and do apply for Canada Council grants and other grants, but demand always outweighs availability. As writers usually spend between two to four years working on a new book, these grants, if awarded, only go so far.

I also depend upon revenue from Access Copyright, a collective agency that issues licences to authorize the copying of my copyright material. About 85% of Access Copyright's current revenues, what it collects from educational institutions, is at risk if fair dealing for education is incorporated into Bill C-32. So I stand to lose up to 85% of my income from Access Copyright.

Former industry minister John Manley told you last week to have a look at the new education provisions “in five years' time, to see if some of these extreme expectations...have come true, but in the meantime come down, in balance, on the side of education”.

Actually, in the meantime, teachers across Canada will be encouraged by this new fair dealing exception to freely copy big chunks from a book of mine, maybe even a chapter or more, for an entire class without paying Access Copyright--and, through them, me. The collective that represents me and other artists will be forced to cut back drastically and will be less able to represent us effectively. More copying will hurt book sales, as well. With all due respect to Mr. Manley, five years is too long for us to wait while we're being decimated.

In ten years I've had five books published, and for six of those years I've published a literary magazine. The more than a quarter-million dollars of revenue generated by these publications generated tax dollars and infused money into the local community of Cape Breton, benefiting publishers, printers, designers, graphic artists, illustrators, distributors, writers, advertisers, photographers, and booksellers. At a time when rural communities across Canada are experiencing out-migration, my cultural and entrepreneurial contribution has been positive for the economy. And I am only one creator.

Fair dealing for education is not defined in this bill. As other witnesses have mentioned, a Supreme Court ruling lays out a six-part framework for deciding what might be fair. The courts are entitled to consider other factors as well, but the question is to be decided on a case-by-case basis, and protection of an author's financial interest in the work he has created is not a priority in that framework. No one at this point really knows what fair dealing for the purpose of education really means--except more copying without compensation to creators, and more costly lawsuits.

An advantage of living rurally is that one gets to know many of the people who operate local businesses. Several years ago, a local photocopying shop called me because an educator had arrived at the store and wanted to photocopy 100 copies of a children's book that I had written. When told that she couldn't copy the entire book or make so many copies without being in violation of copyright, her response was, “I'll never read another thing he writes. Who does he think he is--Harry Potter?”

Now, what disturbs me is not that the teacher in question didn't realize that Harry Potter was a fictional character, but that she assumed that stealing from me would not matter. Adding education to fair use is an invitation to much more abuse and to protracted legal battles. The practical outcome will be far more copying by teachers, and fewer publishers and writers producing much less material for Canadian readers and Canadian schools. You'll be making my life's work much more difficult to sustain. Please drop the fair dealing exception for education.

Thank you. Merci.

[The Chair (Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC)), Conservative, Gord Brown]

Good afternoon, everyone.

We will call to order this eighth meeting of the special legislative committee on Bill C-32.

We have one hour to hear from our witnesses today, and we have two groups of witnesses: as an individual, Douglas Arthur Brown; and from the Canadian Teachers' Federation, Mary-Lou Donnelly and John Staple.

For five minutes, Mr. Brown, you have the floor.