To answer your question and that of Mr. Breton—both excellent questions—I would say that the big change consists in the fact that there are almost no mechanical royalties now for authors, that is to say the royalties authors got when they sold CDs. Those royalties were a very important source of income, because they were shared 50-50 between authors and publishers. Nowadays, the mechanical royalty has almost disappeared, if you compare the percentage to what it used to be. Currently, we have to deal with online streaming. There are two problems with streaming: one is the size of the pie, and the other is the share of the pie that is given to authors. These are two extremely important issues.
As for collective management, one of its advantages is that the government, through the Copyright Board of Canada for instance, can intervene with regard to the share that is given to each group of rights holders. There are indeed several models elsewhere in the world. In its1911 law, the United Kingdom had a rights reversion clause, which we have been discussing today. Unfortunately, it removed it in 1956.
In Europe, there are different mechanisms, that is to say that there is a limit on an author's power to transfer his or her rights. Some people feel that is too strong in intervention. However, the Europeans have adopted the viewpoint that in the beginning of his career, an author will sign practically anything, as Mr. Adams said. Their viewpoint is that an author is not allowed to sign any document that transfers all of his rights, because when he does so, he is in a weak position. And so European countries, particularly on the continent, limit the author's power to transfer his rights. As I said initially, Germany goes much further. It gives the author the right to take back his rights in certain situations, even if the contract does not allow it. And so, there are several ways of recognizing that an author at the beginning of his career is in a vulnerable position.