At the international level, it's interesting to note that some countries are making real progress in protecting rights holders from digital dangers and lawless, ruthless multinational companies.
This summer the European Union, with some difficulty, passed a directive whose general political orientation deserves to be examined. The principle of this reform is to incite platforms like YouTube, that belong to Google, to provide better compensation to the artists and creators who contribute content, and see to it that these platforms not allow copyright-protected content to be downloaded.
The European MPs had to face a barrage of lobbyists advocating free-of-charge access in the name of innovation and freedom of expression, the very essence of the Web, according to them. Despite that, the members from 28 European countries held firm and finally passed that directive, which represents an unprecedented step forward in the protection of copyright in the digital age.
In the Netherlands, an agreement has just been concluded between the government and the public libraries to regulate the lending of digital material by establishing fair compensation to be divided 50-50 between the authors and publishers, based on the “one copy, one user” model. Under that model, a digital book can only be lent to one reader at a time. An embargo concept was also added, so that there will be a period of 6 to 12 months between the publication of a book and the possibility of borrowing a digital version of that book. The point being that when a book has just been published, it is important for the author that he or she be able to sell some. If the book can be borrowed in digital form immediately, he will lose revenue.
These are our recommendations.
We ask that you review the notion of fair use in the copyright act, and that the term “education” be better defined in section 29.
We recommend that the other exceptions be defined and circumscribed according to the principle that any exception should only exist when access to the works is impossible otherwise. An exception must remain exceptional.
A model of fair remuneration for offers must be put in place and be made mandatory as regards digital loans in educational field libraries by imposing the “one copy one user” model.
Furthermore, we must give management companies the means to collect on fees that are due without having to go down the legal path.
Finally, we must oblige digital platforms to put in place—as some of them already have—a detection system to prevent copyrighted content from being placed online as is done in the European model.
On behalf of Quebec authors, we thank you for your attention.