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.
11:45 a.m.
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
Rogers is in full agreement with TELUS' position.
11:45 a.m.
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
Likewise, yes.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
Okay, that's great.
The next thing I wouldn't mind getting an opinion on is this. There has been some suggestion that in some places the intent of the bill may not be matched by the effect of the bill, and I think you've recommended a couple of technical amendments. Have you forwarded those to the committee?
11:45 a.m.
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
Our amendments have all been forwarded through the BCBC submission.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
We'll now move to the second round of questioning, to the Liberal Party, Mr. Rodriguez, for five minutes.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning and welcome.
Mr. McTaggart, on the one hand, you are saying that the notice-and-notice system is enough. On the other hand, you have no data. What are you basing your comment on?
11:45 a.m.
Director, Broadband policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs, TELUS Communications
Well, when I say that notice and notice is enough, to put it that way, it's in the context of the other measures in the bill. If you were focusing on notices sent to consumers as the sole means to control online piracy, that might be a problem. But what the bill does is it creates tools for rights holders to enforce their rights directly against those who are making their works available on the Internet and to try to shut down the enabler sites, which are the ones that are making it possible to do this.
But with respect to whether notice and notice is enough, in a sense, implicit in that statement is that other alternatives are unpalatable. But I'll turn it back to you.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
You are saying that the other options are not realistic. Do you have any data on this topic, yes or no?
11:45 a.m.
Director, Broadband policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs, TELUS Communications
Well, again, we haven't defined what we're talking about, but other measures that have been proposed include notice and takedown with respect to hosted content, or notice and termination, or graduated response with respect to individuals who are alleged to have file shared, and as you can imagine, it's an issue that we spend a lot of time thinking about.
So when I say that graduated response-type regimes are unpalatable, my primary concern with them is that they are generally built on the principle of an extrajudicial remedy. They essentially would empower rights holders to achieve remedies against individual consumers without a court ever determining that rights have been infringed. That's our main concern.
With a graduated response type of regime, of which there are many proposed flavours, a common thread is that a rights holder sends a notice to an intermediary and the intermediary takes some kind of sanction against its customer without the middle step of a court or an official body ever determining fault.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Okay.
Ms. Dinsmore, you said that roughly 5% of your clients get a notice. Does that mean that 95% of your clients comply with all the regulations?
11:45 a.m.
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
They simply don't get notices that are directed towards their households.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Do you think that 5% is the actual number of people who download things illegally, or are there many who get away with it, without receiving anything?
11:45 a.m.
Vice-President, Regulatory, Cable, Rogers Communications Inc.
I have no way of knowing that.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
That's the crux of the problem. You are telling us that notice and notice is enough, but, on the one hand, you have no data, and, on the other hand, you are not able to tell me whether the 5% is representative or not. At Bell, you use envelopes to communicate with your clients.
Yet you insist that notice and notice is enough. I am not an engineer, but I would like to have data to rely on, and we don't.
Would you consider other systems that might have more teeth and address the whole bill? Or is this the only option for you?
11:45 a.m.
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
Maybe I could clarify, Monsieur Rodriguez, when you talk about “envelope”. When we say we do it manually, it means the notice is actually viewed by someone electronically, linked up to the customer, and then someone hits the “send” button. We don't actually send a letter to the household, even though content owners might actually prefer that.
Maybe I could throw the question back at you and other content owners. What we actually see around the world when it comes to peer-to-peer file sharing, because there's nothing to take down...I don't know what's on a user's computer. None of us knows what's on users' computers, so there is nothing to take down. Around the world they're struggling with what do we do with peer-to-peer file sharing.
Right now the only and the best thing that has been working is someone letting you know that someone else is infringing, so we pass on the notice.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
With all due respect, isn't it sort of easy and doesn't it somewhat suit you to say that you don't know what a computer has in it? That limits your responsibilities. We often hear telecommunications companies say that they are just a channel. Yet your ads are not about how nice or big the channel is, but rather on how fast downloading is, how many videos are available, and so on. You are using the content provided by the creators. You also say that you have no responsibility. I find that hard to accept. That being said, I am well aware of your technological constraints.
But I think, as a group, you have some responsibility that you do not want to assume .
11:50 a.m.
Assistant General Counsel, Legal and Regulatory, Bell Canada
I don't think we...
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
Serge Cardin Bloc Sherbrooke, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
In some ways, you are all in support of the government's initiative and you're applauding its balanced approach in terms of both copyright and users, an approach that allows digital services to expand and more investments to be made in innovation.
In terms of innovation, I am wondering how we can innovate in order to control all this. You said earlier that you have received tons of notices and the number is constantly going up. As several people said earlier, there is no data on these notices. We also don't know how many of them actually protect copyright.
I think Mr. McTaggart said that you don't see royalties as a positive thing. But royalties are not an authorization to copy products illegally.
You are saying that it would no longer be possible to fight against offenders if royalties are involved. But the two can coexist. You are also saying that there will always be someone to manipulate the technology to make downloading, copying and whatnot possible.
I think you are major players. But you seem to look at all this from a distance. You seem to make your interests a priority, of course. In terms of everything else, you are waiting to see how things will turn out once the legislation is passed.
If we had to vote on the bill today, would you support it in its current form, without changes being made based on your recommendations?
11:50 a.m.
Director, Broadband policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs, TELUS Communications
TELUS does have some recommendations, but they're relatively minor. They're focused on making the notice and notice system work better, more efficiently, and more fairly for all the stakeholders involved. As I have also indicated, we recognize the concerns on the part of some rights holders that the provisions designed to protect innocent intermediaries may be drafted too broadly. They may allow not-so-innocent intermediaries to slip in underneath them. That's not a desirable result, so we would certainly be open to amendments designed to tighten those up.
Beyond that, on what I consider to be the one-two principle behind this bill, on digital copyright issues, at least, you arm rights holders to enforce their rights directly against those who are infringing on them and you enable robust markets for legitimate licensed content. Those are the two steps this bill takes that will improve the lot of everybody involved.