Bill C-32 (40th Parliament, 3rd Session) Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Paul Jones]

Yes, I can quickly speak to that.

The TPM or digital lock provisions in Bill C-32 stand out strangely as really containing no balance whatsoever. What it will mean is essentially the end of fair dealing, the end of a fundamental right enshrined in the Copyright Act, in any kind of digital environment.

What's unfortunate about the overbroad application of the TPM rule is that there's a really elegant solution available, and we saw it in Bill C-60, which says if you're going to break a lock in order to pirate a material, in order to steal from an artist, you can't do that. That's something we're four-square behind.

What we are saying, though, is that there are reasons you might want to break a lock for lawful purposes. It could be fair dealing. It could be archival reproduction of material. It could be to help visually impaired people access a work. You can make a simple amendment to the act that says, look, you can't break locks for infringement purposes, but if it's non-infringing, then it's permissible.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Tabor, I wanted to ask you, because I think you're standing almost unique, of all our witnesses.... I'm not pointing you out just to embarrass you, but we've had people say the sky is falling. We've had people say the end of civilization is nigh, depending, on either side. Here you are, a bookseller, and you're telling us that fair dealing provisions are not going to destroy your business, and you're telling us the technical protection measures don't really help you.

Can you give us a perspective as a bookseller in the education realm in terms of where we should be getting the balance right on TPMs and fair dealing?

[Chris Tabor]

Thank you.

On the TPM side, I think what's missed sometimes is the growing movement toward mobile consumption. We want to be able to reproduce a number of products, educational products for our students. They can consume that on their laptops, on their phones, soon on their iPads or Android tablets. They need to be able to move them around. That's increasingly important to them.

As far as fair dealing effects on our business, it has never had an effect on our business in its current form. Adding education won't have an effect either. Frankly, we find it puzzling how a line can be drawn from fair dealing to opening the floodgates of copying. At Queen's we do 10,000 course packs, which include copyrighted material for which the royalties are collected, and millions of dollars in textbooks each year. We cannot draw that line.

We don't understand why the ability now for a professor to throw on a slide, just for a moment, of declining GST revenues in the last month will somehow affect those sales, just as now, someone talking about macroeconomics, which repeats principles in a book, affects the sales of that book. We simply can't find that connection.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

All right. Thank you.

Mr. Davidson, I wanted to ask you about technological protection measures in terms of accessibility. I had a member of my family who was in university and who was deaf. We had all kinds of problems getting basic subtitles put on the films that were shown. They said, well, there's a copyright on that; we'd be infringing copyright allowing a deaf student to participate in a class.

Much of these works will now have technological protection measures. Are you seeing that the exemptions within this bill will adequately protect students who have disabilities?

[Paul Davidson]

I can start, and then Steve Wills may want to interject as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

It's going to have to be a really quick answer.

[Paul Davidson]

Our fourth recommendation to the committee--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

You have ten seconds.

[Paul Davidson]

Okay.

Without fundamentally altering the balance that's been struck by the bill, we recommend that a provision be made to permit the breaking of digital locks for any purpose that does not infringe copyright, so that students who have special needs can access the materials they should be able to access.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

Mr. Braid, for seven minutes.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for appearing today. It's been quite informative. It is indeed refreshing to hear that in fact the sky isn't falling, and that there's urgency to studying and passing Bill C-32.

Mr. Turk, I wanted to start with a question for you, please. In your presentation you made the statement that fair dealing under Bill C-32 does not exceed the U.S. notion of fair use. Could you please elaborate on that?

[James L. Turk]

Actually, I'd ask Paul, who is our person who focuses on the U.S. legislation, to answer that. He could do that more completely than I could.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

All right.

[Paul Jones]

I'll try to be quick in my answer.

The United States has a robust publishing industry. It has an incredible content or entertainment industry, probably the strongest in the world. It has educational fair dealing. The U.S. copyright law says that you may fair deal for purposes “such as”; it lists some, but you can do other things. It's broadly accepted there that education falls within that. It's set out in certain guidelines, including the right to make multiple mechanical copies of a work for classroom use.

There's no indication that Bill C-32 is heading even remotely in that direction, but that's the standard in the United States. They allow that; they still have authors; they still have writers; they still have all kinds of cultural activities going on. To suggest that Canada moving even modestly in that direction is somehow going to cause the sky to fall is just ludicrous.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Davidson, you mentioned in response to a previous question that currently the university community in our country pays about $300 million annually in copyright and licensing fees. Could you elaborate a little on that, and provide us with a bit of breakdown of where those charges come from?

[Paul Davidson]

I'll ask Steve Wills to provide the detail on that.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Sure.

[Steve Wills]

We were given the figure of over $300 million by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. It involves spending by libraries in universities across Canada. Of that $300 million, my understanding is that $160 million, approximately, is for licensing digital resources--for example, the digital versions of academic journals.

There are various.... For example, there's the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, which was set up by a consortium of, I believe, about 68 universities. That body negotiates licensing agreements directly with academic publishers for use by the universities in that consortium of digital versions of those journals. Similarly, the regional university library consortia across the country, such as the Ontario Council of University Libraries, together with their counterparts in the west, the east, and in Quebec, all negotiate similar licensing arrangements.

So a significant portion of what's happening is that universities have transitioned towards the use of digital resources and away from photocopying. For that reason, when people talk about the threat to the licensing revenues, for example, of Access Copyright or Copibec, the threat does not come from Bill C-32. The threat comes because in the digital environment those who are offering licences for the digital works are often bypassing these collectives and dealing directly with institutions to negotiate new agreements.

As I said, of the $300 million, about $160 million is licensing of that kind. I don't have a breakdown on the rest of this money.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

Is it fair to say that Bill C-32 does not alter access copyright fees or any other licensing fees that the university community currently pays?

[Steve Wills]

In my view, that would be fair to say, and the reason is that most of the revenue for Copibec and Access Copyright comes from the licensing of multiple copies of such things as journal articles and chapters from books. We have a strict ruling on multiple copying for educational purposes from the Copyright Board of Canada, in 2009. As Mr. Davidson has said already, the copying in question was no more than several pages per student per month, and the Copyright Board was quite clear that that copying is not fair dealing. It does not even come close to the level of copying that is being done for course packs and multiple copies handed out to students, under licences.

Therefore, I think that licensing revenue is not under threat.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Following that thread, to your mind, why is the exception for the educational use of Internet materials so important to university students in the digital age today?

[Steve Wills]

I think it's important to students and to professors and teachers. If we were just dealing in an educational setting with any individual using publicly available work on the Internet, you could certainly make strong arguments that there's an implied licence to use that or that it might be fair dealing by that individual. However, in the educational setting there are many group uses of material.

Showing an Internet video in front of a class of students is essentially a public performance. It's a different set of rights. In making a work available on a course management site or a course website, you're making a copy available to each student in a class. It's when you get into these multiple uses that the idea of an implied licence or fair dealing becomes far more grey or hazy.

The reason this exception is important is to provide clarity, so that when students and professors use these works in various ways for educational purposes, they don't unintentionally run afoul of the law and unintentionally commit infringements. They need some safety in the law for the purpose of clarity.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Davidson, why is getting a modernized copyright bill passed in Canada so important for our universities, for our young, bright minds in this country, and for our economy?

[Paul Davidson]

The bill is critically important. I know that members of the opposition have a wide range of views on how it should proceed, but let me say to them that copyright is one of the most polarized issues this country faces. This is one of the most ideological issues it's faced.

I spent close to half a decade on the last round of copyright reform actually representing the creative side, because there were important gains that needed to be made in that round. This time, I think this bill has done a very good job of getting the balance right, and it's important, because....

I mean, it took 25 years for Canada to come to terms with the photocopier. Are we going to take 25 years to come to terms with the digital age when there are so many educational opportunities that are there, when there are so many challenges that are before Canadian students? We have to make sure our students are the best-equipped, the best-taught students in the world, and this legislation will help us do it. We have to have clarity.

I wouldn't want to be the next minister of international trade going to talk about international trade if this copyright legislation is not passed. I know the committee has been hearing a number of witnesses, and there are many more who would like to appear, but in essence, I think this is the best piece of legislation, the best effort we've seen, in a number of years, and we need to move forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

I will move to the second round with Mr. McTeague for five minutes.