Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In view of what Mr. Del Mastro has said, I think it's important to keep in mind that what this amendment would do--and it is identical to the amendment that we proposed, so I will be supporting it--is it would basically say it's okay to circumvent a digital lock if you're doing it for a lawful purpose. If you're doing it for an unlawful purpose--to distribute it, to sell it, to share it with all kinds of friends--that's not okay. But if you bought a movie, and you're a mother and you want to transfer it to your iPod, iPad, or preferably, PlayBook, of course--it being a Canadian product--so that the child can watch it as you're driving to grandma's house, this amendment would enable you to do that. But under the bill as written, you couldn't do that. It would be illegal. You'd be a criminal if you were a mother doing that for your child so they could watch this movie you've paid good money for. The government doesn't feel you should be able to do that.
We also heard from a librarian. I want to remind members of what we heard from Nancy Marrelli, who is from the Canadian Council of Archives. She said:
Let me give you a fictional example of how Bill C-11 might affect archives. An archives holds a copy of a CD on the history of a small Ontario company that built and sold distinctive cast-iron stoves throughout Canada over a period of 150 years. It was the main industry in the small town that grew up around the factory. The CD was created by a small communications group that came together briefly in 1985 as the company was closing its doors. The CD deposited by the family that owned the factory includes photographs, oral history interviews with the owners and several generations of workers and customers, company catalogues, and some film footage of the factory. Only one copy of the CD remains. The communications group disbanded when a fire destroyed its offices and all the original material it had collected for the project. As the lifespan of this important CD approaches obsolescence, the archives wishes to ensure the important documentary heritage it contains is preserved for posterity in a suitable format. But the CD is protected with a digital lock and the archives has not succeeded in locating the original creators. If the archives cannot circumvent the digital lock to preserve the unique historical material the CD contains, an important part of our documentary history will be lost as the CD becomes obsolete and the files become unreadable.
Now, what we haven't heard from the government, Mr. Chairman, is an answer to that objection. We haven't heard how on earth archives are going to get around that. We haven't heard how it's not going to be illegal for that young mother to transfer the movie she's paid for onto her PlayBook.
That's why I think this amendment is required. What the government seems to want to do is preserve old models and ignore the fact that we have moved into a digital world. We have services, premium services that are in fact profit-making, succeeding very well. I heard recently from students who work on software, who write software at Carleton University. I met with them last week about their view on this. They know the digital world very well, and they see this bill as trying to stick us with an old model that won't work in the current environment.
I think there is a need for this. My colleague Mr. Del Mastro talked about Music Canada losing $800 million a year or something. The difficulty with that argument.... Is he really suggesting that with this bill, they will now recover that, they'll get it back? I don't think he's really suggesting they're suddenly going to put digital locks on and therefore get $800 million in revenue back that they've lost in the last few years. If he is, I'd like to hear his argument about how they--or the film industry, for that matter--are going to suddenly recover all that money because of this bill.
The other thing, of course, is that this seems to be driven by.... We've heard, and we've seen evidence of this in WikiLeaks, that this is driven by U.S. corporate interests. The government seems to be succumbing to that. The funny thing is that this would actually take us further than the situation currently in the U.S., in view of court decisions there.
So I will be supporting this amendment.