I actually will be talking about this more tomorrow at the other committee, but Ms. Zagar made as good a case, I suppose, as can be made on this. The Equustek decision was extremely problematic but it does show that the existing law does work. It works maybe even too well in the case of Equustek, because hard facts make bad law. That was a silly little IP case that ended up having worldwide consequences.
I take issue with what Ms. Zagar said about characterizing this as being about artists. These lawsuits are brought by great big huge multinational record companies. Let's not fool ourselves. These are not about individual artists. Everybody always speaks for individual artists, but it's big multinationals—and those are now down to three big multinational record companies. These companies are worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. They are not impoverished, and they go after it when they think they can get money out of it. We're seeing a proliferation of troll-type activity in Canada now that is driving normal people crazy with demands for $5,000. The enforcement is getting out of hand actually. We're getting too much.
It's not just companies that enforce the law. In extreme circumstances there are criminal provisions even now. There have been forever in the Copyright Act, so if somebody starts selling counterfeit DVDs out of the back of a truck at a flea market, they can be arrested and charged criminally. That's been the law for a very long time, and there's nothing wrong with that. The criminal law has occasionally been pushed too hard too fast by our system, by overzealous police at the insistence of certain collectives, but by and large, with a few notable exceptions, it's been used appropriately and it's there for really bad situations.
If we're going to have more enforcement—I'll talk about it tomorrow—there are moderate models that can be looked at perhaps, such as the existing Australian model, not the new proposed one, that would make sure that proper judicial proceedings are undertaken by judges and that we don't have some kind of self-appointed tribunal making these decisions and invoking effectively industry-sponsored censorship. There are safeguards that need to be put in place to make sure it is all very judicial and that it follows the rule of law.
I don't think we have a big enforcement problem, and all the existing data shows that so-called piracy is vanishing. The industry finally figured out how to deliver movies and music very cheaply and easily to people, and people want to get things conveniently and easily and honestly, and so the kind of BitTorrent activity and other so-called pirating activity that we hear histrionics about is almost not an issue anymore.