Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for giving the Fédération nationale des communications an opportunity to speak to you on the review of the Copyright Act.
The Fédération nationale des communications, or the FNC, represents about 6,000 individuals who work both in media—print media, televison, radio or digital media—and culture—museums, crafts, performing arts or festivals. Today, my main point focuses on the problematic situation for journalism in the digital age and its repercussions on the copyright issue.
The world of information is going through an unprecedented economic crisis that is threatening its survival and, by extension, the foundations of our democratic society. The problem is not that the information is no longer bringing in revenue, but that the money is no longer in the hands of those who produced the information. It is said that, this year, over 80% of advertising revenues will go to Facebook and Google, while they are investing practically nothing in information content. A large portion of the traffic on their platforms stems directly from the sharing of journalistic works produced at a high cost by our traditional media.
In its current form, the Copyright Act does not address that new reality. We now have an opportunity to implement solutions to help journalists and publishers get new revenues for their journalistic works. In Europe, a number of initiatives have promoted the concept of neighbouring rights, which intervene when revenue collection stemming from copyright application is impractical, even impossible. Those new rights aim to obtain from web giants part of the revenues they get from journalistic works that are being shared without the authorization of rights holders.
The FNC's first recommendation is to amend the act to provide for, as in the case of remuneration rights already recognized under section 15 and subsequent sections of the act, the creation of a right to remuneration in exchange for the reproduction and public communication of journalistic works on the web. To that end, and to highlight the substantial contribution of journalistic work to democracy, the act should also provide for journalistic works a definition that would in part be inspired by the definition already found in the Journalistic Sources Protection Act. The definition could read as follows:
journalistic work: a work resulting from the work of a journalist and consisting in the collection, editing and production of information to be distributed through media, and produced in accordance with recognized ethical standards.
Since the key, when a new right is introduced, rests in the ability of rights holders to have the right applied, and since negotiations between journalists or publishers and web giants is nearly impossible and potential legal proceedings would lead to unaffordable costs, the FNC proposes a second recommendation, whereby the government would support the creation of one or several collectives for managing journalistic works that would bring together journalists and publishers. The 10 collectives could ask the Copyright Board of Canada to set the fees for the reproduction and public communication of journalistic works on the web.
Since the propagation of expert evidences is bogging down the board, and that leads to significant spending, the FNC submits to Parliament a third recommendation, to follow the lead of the Quebec legislator, which imposed limits in terms of expertise in the new Code of Civil Procedure. That way, the board could limit expert evidence by recognizing either expertise produced for the board or common expertise that would be under the board's authority, with each party covering its portion of the costs proportionally.
The combined effect of the above-mentioned measures would simplify the mechanism for the remuneration of rights holders. Although rights holders would lose part of their individual control over their works, since they would have to join a collective to collect fees, they could also more easily obtain compensation for their works being shared on the Internet. As for the web giants, they would benefit from the fact that the amounts they would have to pay rights holders on a daily basis would be balanced and they would not have to negotiate with each and every one of them. That way, social, economic and legal peace would be ensured.
Fourth, the FNC recommends to tighten up the definition of “information location tools”. Since 2012, providers of information location tools have had an advantage over other users.
In fact, the legislator wanted injunction to be the only remedy against a provider of information location tools in case of copyright violation.
There is concern that this exception is an open door to copyright violations, which is the case when an information location tool, in addition to providing website addresses, gives direct access to journalistic works.
As long as a provider is receiving advertising revenue to the exclusion of the owners of websites on which journalistic works are originally published, we are talking about an untenable exception in 2018.
In a context where media revenues are declining, thus compromising the right of the public to quality information, Canadian society cannot afford to wait dozens of years that would be required to give the courts an opportunity to understand, on a case-by-case basis, if not haphazardly, those new provisions of the act. The legislator must take action now and restrict the exception related to information location tools. The survival of properly practised journalism depends on it.
This is why the FNC recommends to tighten up the definition of information location tools to say the following:
41.27(5) In this section, information location tool means any tool that makes it possible to only locate information that is available through the Internet or another digital network without approving or encouraging access to the content covered by copyright.
Thank you for listening. We would be pleased to answer your questions.