Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.
My name is Ferne Downey. I'm a professional actor, and the president of ACTRA and the Recording Artists' Collecting Society, also known as RACS. With me is Warren Sheffer, a lawyer with Hebb and Sheffer, who specializes in copyright law.
Created in 1997, RACS is a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to distribute equitable remuneration and private copying moneys under the Copyright Act. We represent more than 4,000 Canadian recording artists and several thousand more international artists through our reciprocal agreements with collectives around the whole world.
For thousands of Canadians, making music and other creative pursuits isn't a hobby; it's a job. It's how we cover our bills, feed our families, and pay our taxes. Professional recording artists are entrepreneurs who contribute to Canada's $85 billion cultural industry.
Unlike most Canadians, professional artists don't live on one paycheque from a single employer. Rather, we rely on small cheques from many streams of revenue, which add up to allow us to pay the rent or live or invest in our new projects. Don't forget that each new recording project means creating jobs—booking studio space, or hiring an engineer, session musicians, and even a designer to create your digital album art. That's why the private copying levy has been so vital.
For nearly 15 years, our copyright laws recognized that copies have value. Millions of dollars have gone to creators to compensate them when private copies have been made of their work. Unfortunately, Bill C-11 doesn't extend the levy to the new technology being used to copy music. As a result, there will just be less money flowing to these artists, who already struggle to piece together the income to create the music we love.
Now, we've heard you. We know the government's position on this and we're not going to harp on it, but we do need you to understand that letting the levy wither away means lost revenue for these small business people. In a very real sense, the Copyright Act establishes a business model for professional artists and allows them to create a market. We know that in many cases, recording artists' greatest assets are works they have recorded in the past. They can make a living if that intellectual property is protected. Good copyright legislation must therefore do more than punish those who violate the law, it must protect the right of those who own the copyright to control and license their work.
Unfortunately, in many respects, Bill C-11 does not meet this test. There are just too many new exceptions. We at RACS support the 20 amendments put forward by the Canadian Conference of the Arts on behalf of 68 cultural organizations. Today we'd like to speak briefly to a couple of these, which are of particular interest to the recording artists we represent.
First is the user-generated content exception. One of the best things about Bill C-11 is that it finally puts the 1996 WIPO Internet treaties into Canadian law, giving performers moral rights in their oral performances and a “making available” right. However, a few pages later, moral rights are then threatened by the UGC provision that allows people to mash up creative works at whim. We understand the government's intent, but this YouTube or mash-up exception is too permissive and threatens to trample on creators' economic and moral rights. By adopting the UGC exception, you will take away the opportunity for Canadian artists and makers, such as studios and record labels, to license their products.
In other countries, collectives are entering into licence agreements with businesses like YouTube. Canadian creators need to have the same right to control and license our work. We urge you to either remove the UGC provision from Bill C-11 or amend the bill to protect creators' moral and economic rights.
Second are statutory damages. Statutory damages are an important tool in deterring copyright infringement. We believe that damages should be proportionate to the infringement, and so far in Canada they have been. Therefore, we don't see any reason to create a new distinction between commercial and non-commercial infringement. Drawing this distinction reinforces the message that it is okay for me not to pay for music or movies, as long as I'm not selling my illegal copies to anyone else.
When you combine the drastic reduction in statutory damages with the legal costs, it also sends a clear message to creators that they might as well not pursue remedies for these infringements in court.
Bill C-11 also gives illegal file-sharing sites a licence to keep enabling illegal activity by exempting them from statutory damages. Now we don't think this was intended, and we urge you to fix that technical error.
I'll turn to Warren, who will talk very briefly about a third vital area.