Thank you, Madam Chair.
We live in a global village, where information is transferred within milliseconds. I'm no expert in computer science, but, like Mr. Shields, I've noticed that the young people I see don't buy music anymore. They get it on the Internet.
Given that the global village is a reality, are there countries, groups, commercial organizations or other entities that are looking into this issue? Would solving this problem once and for all be plausible, or conceivable? I have a hard time seeing how we can prohibit people from gathering information and reproducing it for their own purposes.
You talked about sampling earlier. We can recall the first artists who sampled music. In Quebec, Marc Déry, among others, was very innovative in sampling music in one of his albums.
How can we solve this problem? I know how broad this question is, but do you have any hope at all that we can help artists safeguard their rights?