Canadian Heritage Committee on March 25th, 2010

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I just wanted to make this comment. Moreover, writers and authors also deserve to be paid. We know that their works find themselves in these applications. That is all I wanted to say.

I shall not ask any questions since we are short on time.

[Prof. Michael Geist]

Let me just respond, and if I have the time later on, perhaps I'll get to the author issue, because I think it's an important one as well.

I agree that there needs to be compensation. I don't necessarily agree that it means there needs to be an iPod levy, though. I think those two are distinct.

You say there's a lot of copying taking place. That's right. The problem is that as the bill reads at this point in time, it does not clearly say that the kind of copying that takes place is now legal. So if we're going to create an environment where there is this kind of system that seeks to legalize it, then you have to at least legalize it, and that's not what we have within the iPod levy. What the iPod levy seeks to do is compensate people for copying done from a CD onto an iPod.

With respect, my view is that someone who has gone out and purchased that CD ought to have the right to transfer that song onto his or her iPod without compensation. The truth of the matter is that most people I know today purchase the CD and never once listen to it on the CD itself; they listen to it on their iPod. If there is additional value there, then price it into the CD in the first place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Bruinooge, please.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have to agree with Ms. Leslie that we're very fortunate to have your expertise here today.

As much as I almost feel like being enticed into a further discussion on Madam Lavallée's point from the opposite perspective, I'm going to set that aside and just go to some of the questions I'd like to ask.

You spoke briefly in one of your interventions on the concept that it was going to become impossible to differentiate between broadcast in broadband or access to the Internet the information that we receive through the various pipes. As broadband becomes accessed through means for which there are no longer any wires—that typically is the case these days, although the home still does rely on some wiring—once perhaps our home-based set-top boxes that deliver our television content and our Internet content begin to be able to access wireless networks, do you envision an environment where those wireless networks are accessible by all our devices here domestically and those wireless networks could be coming from abroad? If that is the case, can you give us a sense of what that environment would be like for being able to attempt to rein in content restrictions?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

There are a few things I'll try to unpack there.

First, I don't think we're going to give up wired and wireless any time soon. In fact, over the years, we are likely to see both of these coexist in the same way we do today but with faster speeds. There are limits of physics, I think, in the wireless space that will not allow it to offer up the gigabyte to the home that Google is proposing to offer up on a trial basis in some communities in the United States. We're not going to get to that point.

As long as there are demands out there for faster and faster speeds, I think there is a role for fibre to the home, for the wired connection. There is also unquestionably a demand for fast speeds in the wireless space, because I think a mobile Internet is a core part of the way people will experience that Internet. So let's be clear. In my view, these continue to coexist and they get faster and become more and more important in our lives.

You raised the issue, essentially, about content coming from outside the jurisdiction and how you regulate that. I made a brief reference in my opening remarks to the challenge of adapting cultural policies from a world of scarcity to one of abundance. That, in a sense, is the question. The world of scarcity was one in which you could keep certain kinds of content out; you could keep it scarce and thus make it more regulable. Today we live in a world of abundance where keeping content out simply isn't possible, and it creates real challenges for those who want to have regulations premised on that scarcity. So I think it's very difficult to keep content out.

That said, I don't think that necessarily means that laws stop applying. I think, for example, of the spam legislation we're seeing, or about hate speech, about a range of different rules. What they seek to do is say, if you are in Canada, those laws are still going to apply. If you're outside the jurisdiction, yes, it's going to be very difficult for us to apply those laws, but at a minimum what we're going to do is ensure that Canadians respect the laws that are in place and that we can enforce.

So I don't think the Internet becomes this no-law land where nothing applies. I think it continues to apply. But I think we've known for 15 years that the ability to regulate content from outside the jurisdiction—short of trying to become a China—is almost impossible to do.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Maybe I'll bridge now into a philosophy that I think you were espousing in relation to how the market should be able to essentially accommodate the content creators.

I guess that type of market philosophy is obviously something that I hold. I'm not going to say that you share that same philosophy. But essentially when someone's creating something—in this case, artistic—or any type of endeavour that becomes digital, if a consumer can get similar degrees of content for free, then in theory there's no market.

But if that artist can then differentiate themselves to the point where their content is desirable, only at that point can they extract value from it and have a market. I think that's kind of the philosophy, unfortunately, that we're at with the Internet.

Is that kind of what you were talking about?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

It's obvious that it is a challenge to compete with “free”, but I don't think we should be of the view that just because something is available for free, no market can develop. For instance, iTunes has sold well over a billion songs, and all of those songs are freely available online. Let's not kid ourselves. You can access it through peer-to-peer. You can access it... If my kids and other kids want to listen to music, they frankly listen to it on YouTube. It is effectively licensed, but they listen to the song. That's all they wanted to do anyway, to listen to the song.

There are lots of ways of accessing that song, some paid, some not. The truth of the matter is that there is value associated with the way you access a song, through iTunes or through a CD, so that you can compete with free.

The oldest example that people like to offer up is that they got a glass of water for free, and there are plenty of people walking out right now with a bottle of Dasani or Perrier or other kinds of bottled water, in which they pay for basically the same thing. They'll pay two or three or more dollars for it.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

But it's not as good as that water.

[Prof. Michael Geist]

There you go.

The truth is that you can compete with free if you provide value. One of the really exciting things about the Internet is that we're seeing innovators coming up with all kinds of different ways where they can add value and entice the customer to pay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Ms. Dhalla, please.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much for coming.

I have had a chance to take a look at some of the work you have done on copyright and net neutrality, and I think you're to be commended for your great insight and perspectives.

I wanted to just pick your brain on a couple of things. Given all of your expertise and wisdom, I think our committee could benefit. One of the things that you've written about in the past in regard to cultural policy is a sort of new innovative idea dealing with the Internet Registration Authority and the funds that they get. One of the ideas that you have proposed is that every Canadian should be able to get a free Internet domain name to ensure that we increase the number of individuals who are participating online.

Perhaps you could comment on that and the direction that you see new media going in over the next three to five years. Tell us what you think our committee and the government could perhaps do to prepare for that, to ensure that Canadians from all demographics, regardless of their socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic background, would be able to participate in the evolution of new media.

[Prof. Michael Geist]

Thanks. Those are great questions.

I'm glad you raised the issue of CIRA and the “dot.ca” domain name. I spent six years on that board. I think it's a well-run, terrific organization. There are more than one million dot.ca domain names registered.

I think we ought to recognize that it generates sizeable sums of money. The way it works is that you register a domain name and you pay that, effectively, licence renewal year after year. The costs of the registry are relatively low, so you're generating quite a surplus of funds.

I think we ought to be doing something good with that surplus of funds. The government still does play a role. It sits on the board in an ex officio capacity on CIRA. The proposal I put forward was indeed to provide everybody with one free domain name. I think, actually, you could do that both as a mechanism to encourage people online... I think it would actually spur business investment, because then you get people who have the domain name and want to start doing things with it. So that's good in that sense.

From CIRA's perspective, I don't think it eats away at all of their revenue, because there are still going to be businesses who want to register, and individuals who want more than one domain name, for which they're going to have to pay. I think it's a nice, tangible way for Canada to create more of a presence online in the form of the dot.ca.

So that's the dot.ca proposal. In terms of what government can be doing, let me touch back for a minute on one of the issues that didn't necessarily seem immediately relevant to new media. This was the issue of open government.

One of the things government ought to be doing to prepare Canadians, so to speak, for this new world is to prepare itself. The reality today is that we talk about all these exciting, innovative things taking place within the private sector. There is mounting expectation for the government to engage in the same way, so that consultations adopt some of the same kinds of openness approaches that we see businesses adopting and public groups adopting, with government trying to do those same sorts of things, government making its own materials available so that people can use, and reuse, and build for cultural, economic, and policy purposes, and for all kinds of different things.

In some of those areas it's low-hanging fruit. For me, in an ideal world we would simply get rid of crown copyright. I don't think it's appropriate to have to ask for permission to use government documents. But if we don't want to do that, we can do what the Australians have done, which is adopt a creative commons licence that says that anybody can use these government works for, particularly, non-commercial purposes without having to seek permission.

We don't have to even change the law. We just have to change the policy so that government begins doing the same kinds of things we're seeing in the private sector, and becoming, I think, more relevant in the lives of Canadians, and in a sense preparing itself for this new media world.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Just going back to copyright, you had mentioned earlier there were a lot of challenges in regard to the proposed copyright legislation.

Since we only have a minute, perhaps you have three ideas, moving forward, that need to be taken into account when new copyright legislation is being developed.

[Prof. Michael Geist]

I touched on, obviously, the specifics. If we were to think about it from a principle basis, I would say that, one, it needs to be forward-looking. We need to recognize that some proposals that have been put on the table, and are very strongly advocated for, come out of the 1990s. We're talking about policies a decade or older that, frankly, have been proven not to work. We need a bill that doesn't become irrelevant the day it is passed, or frankly, irrelevant the day it's introduced.

We need legislation that is forward-looking. We need it to be technology neutral. Bill C-61, as an example, made specific reference to VHS tapes, talking about the ability to transfer in format from a VHS tape to digital. This is ridiculous. This is not forward-looking. This is go to your basement to see if you can find any VHS tapes.

So we need forward-looking, we need technology neutral, and then I think we need to remember the issue of balance. Everybody comes and says that copyright is all about a balance. I think we need to recognize that it is very easy, if we're not careful, to take the balance we have in the offline world and distort it online. Locking everything down without bringing on the balancing stuff that we have in the offline world would distort the balance in this digital world, which I think we all recognize is the dominant place where most people are going to be consuming and creating.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Rajotte, next question, then Ms. Leslie.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wanted to follow up, Mr. Geist, with respect to your issues of digitization and government as a model user. I'll just pose a series of questions and issues for you.

On digitization, could you explain to us what we're not digitizing? You gave some examples--for instance, the National Film Board, which is digitizing a lot of works.

Also, in terms of government as a model user, I have to say I'm a bit surprised by the comment. In my sense, the information being put online is a vast amount of information. Even the consultations, and you described the copyright consultations--I think you described them as the best, most open copyright consultation.... Also, all the budget consultations were online since last year, and the new pension consultations will all obviously be online. I think these are certainly good things. I think everyone would agree with that.

Perhaps you could, just explain where the government should be going more in terms of being a model. You look at BizPal as an example for small businesses. Could you explain where government as a model user needs to do more, and also in terms of what we should be digitizing that we're not currently?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

I'll deal with the second part first, the issue of government.

For a number of years the perception of government in the online environment was this e-government, this notion of delivering government services online. That is a very good thing. In fact, Canada was seen as being very good at it. Today there is in many countries an increasing emphasis on what might be seen not as e-government but rather as open government, saying that we can take many of the data sets that reside in government—and not all of these are political policy things. This is everything from weather data--weather data is a classic one that we take for granted--to government-generated, which we make available, and you get economic ecosystems that develop around that. But at the moment there is still a lot of data--population data, labour data, Statistics Canada data, Industry Canada data--largely in data sets that are not readily accessible.

What we are seeing take place at the national level in other countries like the U.S. and the U.K. is to try to put those data sets online and then make them freely available to mix and reuse, in a sense to mash up and have the public add value to it. I can't tell you necessarily everything that is going to happen with that other than to say we are going to see things happen with it.

In Vancouver right now they put their data up, everything from basic garbage collection data to other kinds of municipal service-type data, and they said you can do what you like with it. I was just literally this morning at a meeting on open government, and one of the initiatives they were talking about was VanTrash. For whatever reason, Vancouver changes the dates of trash collection every month. I don't understand why, but apparently they do. What did this do? This took Google Maps, mashed it up with the data the city was supplying, and allowed people to take a look at where they were and to get an e-mail notification the night before their trash was scheduled to be removed. It is the sort of thing we would typically think of as e-government, and in fact, it's not the government providing it, it's the public that is using this data to build and mash up on it.

So I think we're seeing a lot of that and I think there would be a lot of value in doing that.

On the issue of digitization, there are a number of digitization initiatives that are taking place. The University of Alberta is doing some things where it tries to take some of our cultural heritage and bring it into the online world. The best-known digitization initiative anywhere right now is the Google initiative. It is of course taking books and digitizing them.

The Google initiative is a great initiative, but if we live in a world where the only major digitizer is Google, that's a problem. What we need is to recognize that we are a relatively small country. We could, if we wanted, create a national digital library in which we digitize everything. We could start, if we wanted, just with works that are in the public domain. If you want to start with what is non-controversial, no longer copyright-associated, and everything in the public domain all gets digitized, and from there start moving toward all the other works, you could find ways.

Germany is trying to move forward with the same kind of thing and to do it in a way that builds in some kind of compensation model when the works are being used. But if you do that, what could be a better way of ensuring access by Canadians and by the world to Canadian culture than by ensuring it is available in a digital format?

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Do I have more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Yes, you have 30 seconds.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

I know you wrote a column about Amazon in Canada, and it's a very topical issue. I am wondering if you can just expand, for the committee, your views on that in terms of what the government should do with respect to that issue.

[Prof. Michael Geist]

I had a chance to write a column and then do a debate on it on the CBC radio show Q. I think there is a role to play for Canadian regulations that support Canadian authors and support Canadian publishers. Indeed, there is scarcely a book published anywhere in this country that does not enjoy support from the public, in a sense, through the various programs, and that is absolutely essential.

I am less convinced that similar kinds of regulations are needed for booksellers, much less a distribution arm of an online seller. The reality is that one of the big challenges Canadian authors faced in years past was lack of shelf space. It wasn't whether or not the company was foreign owned. It was that bookstores, especially some of the smaller stores, have a limited amount of shelf space and so, yes, they are going to carry Canadian titles, but they are also going to carry the J.K. Rowlings and the Dan Browns and all the other well-known authors, because they are in business to sell books that their customers want to buy.

Amazon and the other larger players are a good thing from a Canadian author and publisher perspective, because it addresses that shelf space issue.

Mr. Simms has a copy of one of the books that I edited on copyright called In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law. I think it is a pretty good book and you can download it for free online. But what's notable is that if you go down to Chapters or to a smaller bookstore, the likelihood is that you're almost never going to see it. I understand. It just doesn't sell all that much. But if you go to Amazon you can find it, and so Amazon is a good thing for me and my co-authors, indeed, for the majority of Canadian authors, whose biggest challenge is obscurity in terms of finding a marketplace. The notion that Amazon somehow harms that just isn't consistent with the experience we have seen to date.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Ms. Leslie, please.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'll ask two questions in a row so that I can hand over the rest of the time to you.

You cited BitTorrent as being an enormous success. I think the Internet service providers would disagree. Can you tell me what you think about the ISPs' predictions about where this is going, that it will be the end of the world?

You also cited Canadian companies that are leaving Canada. Was it Webkinz?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

Webkinz is still here, but Club Penguin was bought out.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Club Penguin is gone, as an example.

With Canadian content, what can we do to actually promote Canadian content on the Internet in addition to keeping our companies going here?