Another limitation on the communication right exists in the context of what we call retransmission. Retransmission is done by cable companies and direct-to-home satellite companies. They pick up television signals and then transmit them by cable to their subscribers. Normally the rights holders that produce the content contained in those signals would have the ability to say no or to negotiate terms of payment. In this particular case, however, just because of the large number of rights holders that would need to be consulted and clear all the rights for, there's what we call a compulsory licence. There's a requirement of payment again, but you don't go to each and every rights holder to obtain authorization. The Copyright Board establishes a tariff and the cable companies and satellite companies pay according to that tariff. That's a limitation as opposed to a true exception.
The private copying regime is another kind of compulsory licensing scheme with a bit of a twist. What it allows people to do is to make copies of music for their personal use on certain kinds of recording media. They don't again need the consent of the rights holder and they don't pay. However, the manufacturers and importers of the media that qualify under the regime for the making of these copies must pay a form of levy to a collective society that represents various classes of rights holders, in this case authors of musical works, the sound recording makers, and the performers. That gives you a sense of the range and type of limitations and exceptions you might find in the act.
If you turn to page 22, that slide discusses a bit about how the rubber hits the road, as it were, in terms of how rights holders can exploit their rights to their advantage for economic purposes. Not only is copyright in a sense a bundle of individual rights, and each of these individual rights can be administered in different ways, but by the same token a rights holder can decide that they will license by territory or over a certain timeframe or into a certain media. It's up to them to decide how they wish to exploit their rights.
A fundamental principle of copyright is that these rights are alienable. In other words, you can assign your right to other people so that they can then exploit the right. This is very important for the manner in which ultimately these rights are administered.
This is true of the economic rights, but the moral rights are treated on a slightly different footing. The moral rights recognize that it is important not to allow the honour or reputation of the author of the work to be prejudiced. They can't be transacted away; they can't be sold or assigned. But if somebody wants to use a work in a particular way that in theory could be prejudicial to the creator, then they can approach the creator and the creator can waive their right and say they consent to the use in this context. That's a bit of the distinction between the economic rights and the moral rights.
How is consent given? That's dealt with on page 23. I can give a simple permission that is generally known as a licence. I just allow you to use my work in a specific instance or for specific uses, but I can also surrender my right to you. I can sell it to you, if you will. In that case there's actually a change, a transfer of the ownership of the right. I'm no longer the person who can exploit it and you have to go to the new owner to get all the necessary consents. To be legally effective, these assignments and these licences must be in writing and signed by the owner of the copyright. That's a small technical matter.
On page 24, we deal with the way in which rights management actually occurs in practice. For the most part, individual creators are not interested in having to go out themselves to try to sell their works. They're more interested, by and large, in the creative act and the creative process. They have a number of options that are open to them in terms of how they can do this. In some cases, they can assign their right to a publisher. In the literary world, that's the typical arrangement. They will assign their right to the publisher, and then the publisher is responsible for marketing the work and exploiting the right.
In the case of music, on the other hand, particularly as it relates to communication, the rights holders have banded together in the form of a collective society, and the collective society is the entity that will license the rights on their behalf. There again, how the licensing is done can vary. In some cases, licences are transactional, so they relate--
