Go ahead Mr. Foulon.
Evidence of meeting #132 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #132 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Chair, Copyright Committee and Members' Rights, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
Go ahead Mr. Foulon.
12:50 p.m.
President, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
As far as Internet service providers go, no.
12:50 p.m.
President, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
It's surprising, I know.
We mentioned this earlier. Individuals may be on the hook for part of the bill, but currently, they are made to pay on the technology side. Last I heard, the rates companies are charging for Internet data, cell phones and home Internet service aren't exactly plummeting, but they are telling people they will have access to all kinds of things as a result.
That's more or less the problem nowadays. If those people aren't held to account, what happened to Mrs. Guay will continue to happen, and the person at your car wash is going to say that they had the right to access the book on the Internet because it was there.
Just because something is there doesn't give you the right to take it. If the front door to my house is open, you can't just walk in.
12:50 p.m.
President, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
That's a good analogy. We are being forced to bear the burden of not having installed a sophisticated alarm system to prevent people from breaking in. Last I heard, you aren't allowed to walk into someone's house and take what you find just because the door isn't properly locked.
That's where the problem lies. A tremendous amount of awareness-raising is needed as far as students and teachers are concerned. When teachers stand in front of a classroom of students, their minds like sponges, and send them photocopies of photocopies or project copyrighted content onto whiteboards without authorization, how can students—the teachers of tomorrow—possibly understand and pass on the concept of copyright?
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
You're absolutely right. In fact, the people at the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec showed that today's consumers expect to pay a lot for a device or computer and then have access to everything. Later, they are surprised to find out that they don't have access to everything. You're certainly right that some awareness-raising is needed.
As far as Canada's review of the notice and notice system goes, where do we stand in relation to the notice and takedown regime? Are we behind other countries?
12:50 p.m.
President, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
I can tell you that we're not leading the pack.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to begin with a comment. It will be very important to find out whether Mr. Blaney's colleagues on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, Mr. Yurdiga and Mr. Shields, share his view on fair dealing. We'll have to see.
To the Canadian copyright organization, Mr. Harnum, I did some research. I want to know if your crystal ball in 2018 is as good as it was in 2009. I'm reading from the report that your organization submitted to similar committees in advance of the 2012 review. I think you telegraphed what you meant by the fact that the document was called, basically, fair dealing's not a good idea.
Here's what you said:
“Fair use” has been described as an “astonishingly bad” system amounting to little more than “the right to hire a lawyer.”
Then it goes on to talk about the United Kingdom, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand rejecting those methods, and how there were lots of ways in Canadian law to protect authors but also let people have access to that material.
Here's what is really interesting for me, from what you said then:
Far from solving copyright problems, adopting fair use would only exacerbate them. Its drawbacks are numerous. Fair use would lead to uncertainty, expensive litigation and leave important public policy decisions to be made by courts instead of Parliament. It would reduce revenues available to the Canadian creative industries; revenues which are vital to their indigenous growth. It would undermine legitimate licensing models including collective licensing of copyrights.
It's a very prescient report from 2009.
We know that there are still good news stories. We know that Canadian creators are exporting content. There's the Frankfurt book fair. We know that Canadian stories are being turned into movies, and people get paid for that.
We hear clearly that the education sector's a mess. We talked about the $26 tariff for universities earlier today. In K-to-12 it's $2.41 that the school boards aren't prepared to pay to make sure that authors get their fair share. That's not even a couple of chocolate bars in this country, and it's certainly less than a latte for the teacher, so I don't get it.
What we have now is a regime in which we have the stick, which is the tariff. How do we get back to a carrot so that everybody can just play in this field together, we can have our good stories, you guys can get paid, and the educators can educate? Are there any carrots left, or are we now in a framework where it's only the stick?
Then I'm going to go to your colleagues here around the table, beginning with Mr. Harnum.
12:55 p.m.
Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
Well, at the moment it's all carrot. There is no stick, because, as I said earlier, universities are smart. If you say to universities, “You have a choice: you can pay for content or not”, they will largely say, “You know what? We're not going to pay for content”, or “We'll put up guidelines and pretend that we're paying for content when we're really not.” That's what has happened.
Government has made this problem by making the changes to the Copyright Act that extended fair dealing to education. Government has to fix it. It can't be fixed by the industry. We've tried to negotiate with the educators on these matters and we've been unsuccessful. We've tried litigation. As you know, the York University case, which Access Copyright won, is still under appeal. The fact is that if our industry didn't have Access Copyright and its funds, which are not being distributed to authors and creators but instead are being spent on litigation, we wouldn't be able to do any of this litigation. We couldn't afford it. Individual publishers cannot afford it. Thank goodness we have Access Copyright to do that work for us, but it's up to the government to fix these problems; it's not up to the industry.
12:55 p.m.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
I'm going to pause you there because even in the Copyright Board review, the regulations didn't attack any of these issues.
I'm seized by this issue, and I want to ask Ms. Pendgracs something. What has happened to Access Copyright? How healthy or not healthy is it? How much life does it have left? As a practitioner in the field, what does the future look like for Access Copyright?
12:55 p.m.
Vice-President, Professional Writers Association of Canada
It looks very scary. When I was on the board there, which I think was from 2003 to 2009, for six years I served as a creative representative on the board. Access Copyright was thriving. It was wonderful. There was so much support in the industry, and there seemed to be consensus on many issues as well when we sat around the table, with publishers and authors sitting around the same table and trying to deal with issues. Then that fair dealing thing came along and created such a rift that I don't know if we can ever fix it.
I think the only way to do it is to get strong-handed and make sure that authors are paid what they're due. I certainly support education and having affordable content for the students, but the writers creating that content need to be paid what they're worth. We have to go back to the way it was, because it's not working the way it is.
12:55 p.m.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
Mr. Verhaegh, are there any other industry solutions, according to you, or is this all on government to fix?
12:55 p.m.
Regional Director for the Prairies and the North, Professional Writers Association of Canada
I think if the law is the problem, then change the law. I'd like to support Ms. Doreen Pendgracs. If writers don't get paid anymore for content that's used in education, then don't be surprised that at a certain point there won't be any content creation anymore for educational reasons, because why would anybody do that?
12:55 p.m.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
Mr. Foulon, what are your thoughts on that?
Is the ball in the government's court? Are there things the industry can still do?
12:55 p.m.
President, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
As I see it, the government needs to step in with much tighter controls so that creators are respected and can continue to enrich Canadian culture.
12:55 p.m.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
Mrs. Guay, what would be your main recommendation to deal with piracy?
12:55 p.m.
Chair, Copyright Committee and Members' Rights, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
First, it should be prohibited and a penalty system should be put in place for those in violation. If nothing is done, it will just go on forever. I don't know whether it can ever be stopped, but doing nothing is disastrous.
1 p.m.
Edmonton Centre, Lib.
Are you suggesting that people be fined or prosecuted?
1 p.m.
Chair, Copyright Committee and Members' Rights, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
Legal proceedings can be effective. That's clear from the Université Laval case.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dabrusin
Thank you all for your input.
I will ask the committee members to stay behind, as we have a bit of business to deal with. It'll only take about two minutes, at least I hope so.
Thank you again.