Thank you.
I think it's important to recognize that we need to ask this question: What exactly is being compensated here?
I don't believe it can simply be that we're compensating because one set of companies have done well and another set of companies are struggling. We didn't ask Netflix to pay Blockbuster because they came up with a better model. What we're compensating is use. It talks about use here.
If what we were talking about was full publication of these works, then I think you could credibly say that if Facebook or Google are copying full text, we would like to see compensation for that. I actually believe that's what the agreements that they've reached with these publications are for. That's why they're commercial agreements—different from the agreements we see in this bill.
That's not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about full publication. We're talking about something as simple as a link. A link, I would argue, from a copyright perspective, is certainly not an act of republication.
Even further than that, the kind of use that is being used with this link is clearly permitted under the Copyright Act. I'd argue, frankly, that it may not even fall there, in part because it is so de minimis. It doesn't even rise to the level of substantial use. If it does, though, this is clearly fair dealing. The Supreme Court of Canada has said that this is a user's right that is core to our copyright law.
For this legislation to say that those rules simply don't apply to a particular class of users, that scares me. What happens when you turn around and say that education isn't entitled to this? What happens when you say that other certain large publications aren't entitled to this and they should be compensating?
I think that we rely upon, and journalists rely upon, fair dealing. That insertion in the Copyright Act, which I should note does not appear in the Australian legislation, is a mistake that should be removed.