Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Pam Dinsmore and I am vice-president, regulatory, at Rogers Communications Inc. I appreciate the opportunity to present our views on Bill C-32.
Rogers is a diversified Canadian communications and media company. We are in a variety of businesses, including wireless, cable TV, high-speed Internet access, radio and television broadcasting, and program production. We also publish some of the most recognized magazines in the country, such as Chatelaine and Châteleine, L'actualité, and Maclean's, and we have extended these traditional brands online using digital media. As such, we support a copyright act that takes a balanced approach to the interests of rights holders and users, thereby optimizing the growth of digital services and investment in innovation.
We believe that Bill C-32 goes a long way towards striking this balance, and we support its passage in a timely manner. However, we think the bill would benefit from some changes to provide greater clarity and certainty for both users and rights holders, particularly with respect to the provisions regarding the time-shifting and hosting exceptions and the notice and notice regime.
First, we are pleased that the bill legalizes the time shifting of television programs and legitimizes the use of personal video recorders. A PVR is a set-top box that our customers rent or own. It is connected by wiring to one of their television sets. PVRs allow our customers to time shift programming from that television set and watch it at a time of their choice. It is a service that has proven to be popular with customers who watch a lot of television programs but want to watch them at the time of their choosing.
We are also pleased that the bill removes obstacles to the implementation of innovative technologies such as network personal video recorder service, or network PVRs. This service will operate in the same way as a PVR but allow for the remote storage of our customers' time-shifted content in servers located in our headends rather than storage within the set-top box. Given that a network PVR service can store programs from any television in a customer's house, it removes the need for them to rent or own a PVR for any of their television sets. It will also allow us to make seamless upgrades to our customers' network PVR service without their having to rent or purchase new equipment. It goes without saying that moving from PVR set-top boxes to a network PVR service will allow our customers to enjoy the benefits of time-shifted programming in a greener and more technically efficient way.
Network PVR is not just a concept. It was launched by Cablevision in the U.S. at the end of last year, following the ruling of a U.S. appeals court that the concept was lawful under U.S. copyright law. This means that Cablevision's customers are already able to time shift programs on any one of their home televisions sets without the need to purchase or rent a PVR. As a result of rolling out its network PVR service, Cablevision has announced that it will stop purchasing PVR set-top boxes to rent to its customers.
Rogers is eager to provide our customers with the same benefits of a network PVR service that are being experienced by Cablevision's customers. We therefore fully support the technology-neutral approach to the time-shifting and hosting exceptions in the bill. The government made this approach clear when it introduced the bill, as did Industry Minister Tony Clement when he appeared before this committee. There are, however, technical improvements that could be made to the drafting to ensure that the government's policy intent to remove barriers to the development of cloud computing and other remote storage services like network PVR are removed. In this regard, we support the BCBC's proposed amendments to the time-shifting and hosting exceptions.
Second, we support the notice and notice provisions in the bill. These provisions will make it mandatory for all ISPs to implement a notice and notice regime. This is a practice that has existed at Rogers on a voluntary basis for over a decade to combat Internet piracy. With the increase in our customer base and increased awareness of the regime on the part of rights holders, the number of notices we process has risen year over year. In fact, in 2010, we processed over 207,000 notices. In our view, notice and notice is the best and fairest way to make individuals aware that they are accused of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing while recognizing that ISPs should not unduly interfere with our customers' online activities. While we recognize that the regime is not perfect, we believe it does result in discouraging repeat offenders. The fact that some European countries are beginning to consider notice and notice as a valid response to illegal file sharing and that some ISPs in the U.S. have notice and notice agreements with rights owners serves to underscore that Canadian ISPs have been ahead of the curve for years in our approach to combatting Internet piracy.
The BCBC has proposed amendments to ensure that the obligations to deliver notices and retain data, and the possibility of cost recovery for doing so, come into effect at the same time. This is to ensure that ISPs have adequate time to design and implement the systems required to comply with these requirements—