Evidence of meeting #19 for Bill C-32 (40th Parliament, 3rd Session) in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was notice.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
We have heard some people say it is perhaps too narrow.
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
We are not necessarily here to pass judgment on the exact wording, but...
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
We support the changes that are going to make things clearer. I don't have the exact words that should be replaced, but if a word is changed, we will support the change. We are prepared to discuss these technicalities with other people, but I wouldn't be able to suggest the words that should be changed.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
This is where that gets done.
Ms. Dinsmore, what do you have to say about it?
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
Yes, we do support the introduction of the enabler provision. We think it goes a long way to helping the rights holders go after the bad guys, as we've talked about before.
Again, we do support equally the changes that have been proposed to you by the BCBC, which make the actual section itself more specific in that it wouldn't allow or it wouldn't--
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
I am sorry to interrupt, but my time is limited. Do you have any suggestions on what should be changed?
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
There is a proposal in the BCBC submission to you, which we support.
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
It's the same thing.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
The same goes for Mr. McTaggart.
In line with this topic, a number of people are saying that, when we pass a bill—I don't think it is going to be Bill C-32—that fights piracy and piracy websites, the pirates, the owners of those sites, are going to set up their sites in foreign countries.
Do you think that Canadian courts will be issuing injunctions? Is it possible that legislation on copyright can provide for injunctions requiring that network providers block foreign pirate sites? Is that possible and realistic?
Director, Broadband policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs, TELUS Communications
The subject of blocking websites is a very difficult one. I note that in the United Kingdom, where they're just developing their Digital Economy Act strategy to deal with piracy, the first stage is to adopt notice and notice, and they're still mired in the details of how to actually develop a notice and notice system. But subsequent stages, I believe, contemplate blocking of content, and on that issue I understand that the government has actually referred the question to Ofcom, the regulator, to study whether it's even possible to do it effectively.
Blocking Internet content is very difficult to do, because it seems there are always ways to work around the blocks. There are always ways for sophisticated Internet users to find what they're looking for. And the very concept of blocking content runs so contrary to a lot of our other Internet policy values that it's just not something that has really been pursued.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
What are the obstacles in blocking foreign sites? Where would the problem be?
Director, Broadband policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs, TELUS Communications
In a number of issue areas regarding Internet content, law enforcement is already actively engaged in pursuing the people who make the content available. I understand that in those areas the content is moved around rapidly. For people who are sophisticated and have the intent to circumvent a blocking regime, there are ways to do it.
For an ISP to do it, again, it's very difficult. There's a technique called “DNS poisoning” whereby you simply take the address out of the domain name system tables. The problem is that it's as easy as changing the domain name to make it reappear. And, again, the people who do this kind of thing are very well versed in how to do that.
Another way to do it is by blocking IP addresses, but that often has unintended consequences because websites often are not the only resident at a particular IP address. Blocking an address will often have collateral damage results to other content on the Internet. That results in a situation of having content overblocked, which, again, is not a result that is generally considered desirable.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
So there are technical difficulties, but there might also be legal challenges. Is that right?
Director, Broadband policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs, TELUS Communications
I expect there may be, but I'm not prepared to speak to them. Those would be freedom of expression issues, and those are broader societal issues.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Ladies, do you have anything else to add? No.
Let me go back to the notice-and-notice system.
Mrs. Morin, if I am not mistaken, you said earlier that you received one million notices last year and that you were not able to handle them all. Under Bill C-32 in its current form, you will have even more notices.
Have you thought of a solution to hire enough people in order to handle the one million notices, which will most likely go up exponentially in the coming years?
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
If there are obligations under the legislation, we are obviously going to comply with them and make the necessary technical changes. That being said, it doesn't mean there will no longer be notices.
What we are seeing at the moment is that there is no discipline on the market in terms of sending notices. There are no regulations for the format, the content of the notice, the way they should be delivered to us or the delivery address—because they come from all over the place.
So we are hoping that the legislation will help us to instill some discipline in the market. First, notices could be sent on a regular basis, and, as a result, we will be securing the lock-up with our users. We will also be able to tell complainants that we have sent them a notice, which is another obligation.
So, yes, there will be more and more notices. But the legislation is going to instill some discipline. Providers and copyright owners will be working together with the government to establish the regulations for notices. Notices sent to our company and sent elsewhere are not always processed in the same way.
Unfortunately, this is the third bill. We are anxiously waiting for a bill that will enable us to introduce these regulations on the market.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
And it seems we are heading into an election this week.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome back, by the way.
Notice and notice, and notice and takedown. This is very serious business in terms of where we're going to go with copyright. We're trying to find a balance here within our committee so that there are no unintended consequences. We look at the United States where we have notice and takedown. On the surface it looks like a very straightforward, reasonable solution. You have a problem, you take it down. But then we see many problems of how it has been used in the United States. There are many issues in terms of copyright overreach and all kinds of anti-competitive things that could be used.
We look to the ISPs to be able to reassure us that notice and notice is the reasonable solution. We have people who want to be able to go after you for lawsuits; you know that. ISP liability--we know groups who will probably be suing again with the SOCAN decision.
And yet I'm hearing a bit of a disconnect. Ms. Dinsmore, you say you're ahead of the curve, and I look at what Rogers is doing. You provide us with information and we can say that's quantifiable; that's something we can work with.
Ms. Morin, you said you guys are waiting and you're filing this by hand.
Mr. McTaggart, you can't tell us if you sent one notice or 100.
I think that's highly problematic. We need the ISPs to give us certainty. Ms. Dinsmore, all kudos to Rogers, but I can't see that in an age when you tell us you're getting a million hits, you can tell us we're still filing it by hand, with the Bell girls with the roller skates on. We need some certainty if we're going to enact legislation, because these things will be going to court and there will be tests. If we cannot say that the notice and notice regime is going to be able to do its job with certainty, then the rights holders are certainly going to be looking to take this to another level.
What assurances are you going to give us? Are you going to wait for the legislation before you act, or are we just going to continue down this road?
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
For over 10 years we have voluntarily, and for free, been receiving and processing what we can with the systems we have. Some have automated more; some have not. Originally they were all being processed. But there was also some kind of dialogue with the ISP and the content owner.
We used to seek permission from the content owner so we could let our user know it was this content owner who was making the claim. Before we disclosed their name and their information, we wanted to make sure the content owner was satisfied that, yes, we could pass on the information.
It's something that started with a dozen a month and ballooned. In between we've had three bills. We're on our third copyright bill where we weren't sure exactly what the rules would be.
There are new obligations in C-32 that we continue to support but that we don't do today, and it's never been asked of us: for example, closing the loop with the content owner to say that, yes, we have passed it on; retaining the data about the customer--that's not something we do today, and it's not something we've ever negotiated with the content owner.
With the evolution, with the expectation of a bill, with the expectation to have the industry...we haven't been able to sit down with the content industry and say this is how the notices should be sent to us.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
But you guys are like a telecom giant. I mean, I've dealt with people who have sent spurious claims of copyright because they want somebody's site taken down. You don't have a standard to say, “If you're going to make a notice that you expect us to pass on to our consumers, it's going to have to meet this standard, and then you will be assured that if you send another one we will keep track of that.” You don't have that protocol in place at Bell?
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
You make a very valid point, Mr. Angus. It's been very much a cat-and-mouse game, unfortunately. We'd very much like to get to a place where we can be processing them all, receiving them in a consistent fashion, have government fee schedules so that the appropriate fees are set up, and if they don't come in, in the right format, we can throw them back and say these aren't valid.
It would have been nice if we'd had this discussion eight years ago and we had set it all up. We'd all be doing it right now.
I take your point. But we do hope to have a bill passed one of these days, soon, so that we can actually spend the money. You don't spend money on the systems when you don't know what the rules are going to be.
