I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear today, and to acknowledge the daunting task facing its members as it makes its way through this process.
As some of you may know, I am a singer-composer and the sole owner of my one-artist record label, Quinlan Road, which encompasses both audio and visual production companies.
I have often been characterized as one of the early artists who went independent, as I began my career in 1985 busking on the streets of Toronto. After five years of a do-it-yourself approach, I signed a licensing agreement and now have a mixture of licensing and distribution deals around the world with a variety of companies. These have realized sales of over 13 million recordings. Currently, not only do I continue to function as an artist, but I also manage both the creative and the business sides of the operations of Quinlan Road on a daily basis and on an international level.
I appear today out of concern for present and future creators of many disciplines and out of concern for their respective industry infrastructures.
I have been fortunate throughout my 25-year career to own and control all aspects of my recordings and image rights. Subsequently, my revenue sources exist not only through CD sales or digital sales, but through performance revenues and licences. Because of the way I have invested in my career and my business, it has allowed me to own my masters and directly license them for use in film, theatre, dance, or other kinds of media. At the same time, this does not prevent me from granting permissions for no fee in selective circumstances.
It is very difficult to look to the future in new digital technology without establishing a firm consensus on the real value of intellectual property and who actually owns it. For years it has been clearly established and accepted that the individuals who create it own it, and that the medium in which it is experienced does not diminish that principle.
That point brings me to the novel and newly crafted term of “user rights”.
It is my view that we should be extremely careful with this kind of language, because it isn't a matter of user rights but rather user permissions. Once we dispel the notion that in this respect there is no such thing as user rights, or that people own the music in a CD or a digital download, we can cease worrying about how to balance these rights. Many things the public wishes to do with what they purchase can all be accomplished within the framework of permissions and personal use.
In my company we confront the new realities every day. We have been hard at work trying to offer new products in new ways and to fully leverage the new technologies. But I am here to tell you that making predictions and investments is impossible without some stability in the fundamental recognition and protection of intellectual property.
It is not just my own revenue stream that is affected. It's the jobs of many talented people I have employed over the years. I would like to give you a sample.
They include many recording studios that no longer exist; engineers who specialize in recording classical or acoustic instruments; technicians, their suppliers, and their administrative staff; graphic artists; photographers; makeup artists; mastering companies; CD manufacturers, such as Americ Disc in Quebec; retailers large and small, many now defunct, such as Sam the Record Man; printers, such as the Stratford Beacon Herald; publicists; travel agents; airlines; musical equipment suppliers; insurance companies; local media advertising outlets; caterers; and on it goes.
I know there are those who advocate a proposed business model that would see artists touring all the time. Not only is this not always viable from a monetary sense--or from a human sense, once people start having families--but for many artists such as myself, touring was always a loss leader in order to promote my recordings. Now parts of the touring industry are starting to see the corrosion of their businesses. This has impacted venues, promoters, their local crews, and popcorn sellers, all of whom are now struggling to stay alive.
As well, one should not be misled by equating fame with business viability, as there are many famous people through the new technologies who are still unable to make a viable living. This can hardly be viewed as a business model.
It may be fashionable in some corners to say the arts don't really provide much employment or revenue to society, but when I look at my small company, which once had 15 employees and now has five, and then extrapolate that to the whole industry, the scope of this calamity that presently exists cannot be underestimated.
How has this devastation been accomplished? Although some folks would like you to think otherwise, it is not because, like some sort of buggy whip, copyright has become obsolete and we owners of content property should just “get over it”. Although it might be true that we, as creators, have been slow to enforce our ownership rights, we have counted on our representative organizations, the legal system, and policy-makers to protect our fundamental rights and ensure that our international obligations in this regard are upheld.
Regardless of the details of any regulation, as the law exists now, everything recorded is copyrighted by the creator of that work and is not someone else's property unless licensed or authorized in some way by the creator. Others cannot claim it and watch us scramble to claw it back.
Let me give you a brief snapshot of my own situation with respect to peer-to-peer sites.
You may have a copy of a site called isoHunt. It promotes a full inventory of my audio and video catalogue. This site operates as a bridge to those who want to download my music for free. As many of you will know, the business model of many websites is to offer content that costs little or nothing to them, but that has value to the public, so they can then sell the advertising real estate on the side.
Having been driven over the Canadian border by judgments against them in the U.S., isoHunt has recently brought a lawsuit in Canada asking for their “aiding and abetting of piracy” to be declared legal here. In the current vacuum of uncertainty over copyright reform, many operators are staking claim to the territory that simply is not theirs.
The second site I would like to mention is Mininova. When this site was brought to my attention last November, they too carried my full audio and video catalogue. This site was very helpful, because it proudly boasted a calculator installed for the purposes of advertising dollars, which indicated that my full catalogue of over ten titles had been downloaded over 4,100 times in the previous 53 days. Of course, this does not address single album downloads, or the rest of the year, or the previous years, nor any of the other sites undertaking this practice in Canada or around the world.
It is interesting to note that at the end of November, the Mininova site was forced by a decision of the court of Utrecht to completely alter their business model to feature only those creators who deliberately wished their content distributed for no charge, or, as others would put it, for free. Today, the search for Loreena McKennitt will bring up several album titles with the corresponding links to Amazon, where one might purchase in the legitimate way.
So you see that progress can be made. It is essential that Canada not be considered a pirate nation when it comes to both regulating and realizing the full advantage of all the advantages of new media. It cannot be right that what is produced after years of training and large investments by individuals, businesses, and governments will suddenly be devalued by a change in the rules.
Nor must we allow clever manipulation of language and media to create confusion in the minds of the public as to what the real issues are, especially by those who have hidden vested interests or who operate in theory and not in the reality of actual business.
The watchdogs must be able to see through the smokescreen created by those who operate not by permission, not even by forgiveness, but from a strategy of taking what they can get away with before someone gives notice and takes them down.
In closing, I would like once again to thank this committee for all their hard work and due diligence. I would welcome responding to any questions.