My name is Luc Fortin and I am President of the Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec. I'm also a professional musician. With me today is Mr. Éric Lefebvre, Secretary-Treasurer of our association. Like l'ADISQ, we, too, signed the joint declaration of Canadian cultural industries on Bill C-32.
The Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec is a recognized association of artists that represents almost 3,500 professional musicians working all across Quebec. It is affiliated with the Canadian Federation of Musicians and its mission is to defend and promote the economic, social, moral and professional rights of performing musicians.
To begin with, we feel it's important to clearly state our position on Bill C-32. Unless there are major amendments to the bill, it should not be passed under any circumstances. It is true that the government is establishing some new rights for performing artists, such as the moral right and exclusive rights provided for under the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty which, theoretically, place them on an equal footing with certain recognized authors' rights.
Yet what the framers of the bill are giving with the right hand, they are taking away with the left. What is the point of an exclusive “making available” right if the bill only confirms the lack of accountability for Internet service providers? How can anyone assert a reproduction right over a sound recording when broadcasting entities and educational institutions can reproduce works without prior authorization from the author, performer or producer, and without any applicable royalties for this kind of reproduction? The incalculable number of exceptions granted users essentially invalidates several exclusive rights currently held by rights holders. Some examples include the broadening of the “fair use” concept for purposes of education and parody, the exception for television recording timeshifting, the abolition of certain legal licences in the education sector, and the list goes on.
The Berne Convention provides that an exception should only be permitted “in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.” That is article 9. Bill C-32 does not abide by the Berne Convention in that it grants several exceptions which will in fact deprive creators and performers of remuneration, thereby violating their rights.
As regards Internet service providers, the government is indeed proposing a series of technical protection measures. However, the large record producers, known as “the majors”, who are actually the ones able to take such measures, have long since given up developing these costly measures, due to their extreme unpopularity. It is worth mentioning, for example, that the iTunes site removed all protection measures from its on-line catalogue two years ago.
Furthermore, the private copying regime, which enables authors, artists and producers to be compensated for violations of their reproduction rights, is on its way out. Nowadays, who actually continues to reproduce musical works on cassettes? As for CDs, they will soon be joining cassettes and diskettes on museum shelves, having been replaced by USB keys and digital audio players. Music is reproduced daily on millions of iPods and other similar digital players; however, the royalties are, unfortunately, collected for other formats, all of which are gradually disappearing.
Relying on propaganda, some are currently attempting to convince Canadians that the royalty for private copying is a tax, when it is actually compensation for actions that previously were deemed to be illegal.
Finally, we note that the legislation still has not granted rights to performing artists for audiovisual productions. Yet an artist's performance is of crucial importance, in terms of both commercializing a sound recording and marketing a film or television program. It is time that lawmakers responded to that demand, one that has already been recognized in several countries.
In conclusion, the passage of Bill C-32 would turn Canada into one of the countries that affords the least protection for creations and innovations involving intellectual property.