Industry Committee on May 8th, 2018

[David Buissières, Author-Composer-Performer, As an Individual]

Good evening.

My name's David Bussières. I'm an author-composer-performer with the duo Alfa Rococo, and I'm also the founder and spokesperson for RAM, the Regroupement des artisans de la musique.

Like Mr. Pierre Lapointe before me, I'd also like to provide my numbers. I do thorough research with my royalty statements for a song to find out that, after generating 30,000 streams on Spotify, we received $8.50, while we hold all copyrights. In answer to the question: how much is a stream worth? I reached this figure: 0.03¢ per stream. On YouTube, after generating 60,000 views, we received $151.37, or 0.5¢ per view.

We can see, as Mr. Lapointe stated before me, that when physical and digital record sales completely vanish, and that day is at our doorstep, copyright royalties will far from make up for the lost income. Streaming is a perfect system for users. Who doesn't dream of having the world's music library at their fingertips? For artists and the industry, it's something else. If you're an international star promoted by a major label and a billion streams are generated per song, it still works, but if you create music in Canada, and particularly francophone music in Quebec, where even the biggest hits struggle to reach a million streams because of the limited size of our market, it's a catastrophe.

I believe that the reform of the Copyright Act is a matter of life and death for artists here. It's urgent and it must also include a reform of the Telecommunications Act and an update to the private copying system so Internet service providers and device manufacturers are also required to contribute to compensation for creators here. People have never spent so much to have access to music. Unfortunately, their money is going to corporations that make enormous profits on the backs of the creators.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much

Adam Lackman, you have the floor.

[Adam Lackman, As an Individual]

My name is Adam Lackman. I ran a platform called TV ADDONS. You may or may not have heard of it. Last summer, Bell, Videotron, TVA, and Rogers initiated a lawsuit against me. They were able to get an ex parte motion that allowed them to receive an Anton Piller order, which allowed them to enter my home, seize every bit of my property of value, and that was it. Six days later we had an appearance in court. I won. The judge said that the true purpose of the search was to destroy my livelihood and not actually to enforce copyright.

In the United States there's the DMCA process, which mandates a take-down notice system, meaning if you run an online platform and end users, regular people, put up something infringing, they have to notify you before initiating legal action. My platform did not host any content. It did not link to any content. What my platform offered was the ability for software developers to upload apps which would scrape content from external, unaffiliated online sources. You could make an app that would scrape YouTube content and display it on your TV. You can make an app that would show Donald Trump's tweets on your TV every time he would tweet.

Basically we had over 1,500 add-ons on the system, and supposedly, according to them, fewer than 12 were infringing. Nonetheless, even after we won in court, on a Sunday after Canada Day, they received a stay of execution. The stay of execution meant they didn't have to return any of my property until the appeal. The appeal took about six months to be heard. By then I already had about $200,000 in legal fees, even though we had won initially in court. We actually had to go to Ottawa for the stay of execution hearing.

We eventually went to the appeal. We lost the appeal. It took months for us to find out. Without a notice system in Canada, there's nothing protecting legitimate, honest, neutral online platforms from being pursued by copyright bullies who look to maintain their monopolies while they take advantage of Canadian content creators and whatnot.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Matis Allali.

[Matis Allali, General Secretary, Fédération des associations étudiantes du campus de l'Université de Montréal, As an Individual]

Good evening.

My name's Matis Allali. I'm Secretary General of the FAÉCUM, the “Fédération des associations étudiantes du campus de l'Université de Montréal”. We represent 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the Université de Montréal.

You'll understand that I'm here to talk to you about the fair dealing exception for educational purposes. I will not go on at length about the reasons that exception must be maintained. I'll instead come back to the arguments that are often used in claiming that it must be removed.

We often hear that fair dealing for educational purposes reduced income for creators and that universities spend less on copyrighted content. Let me reassure you. This year, at the “Université de Montréal”, $3 million will be invested for the purchase of copyrighted materials, $500,000 more than last year. So, despite fair dealing for educational purposes, budgets for the purchase of copyrighted material are being increased. In the same sense, I would remind you that, in 2015, school manuals still represented the second largest category of monographs purchased in Canada.

That said, protecting the rights of content creators is an important issue. Their financial instability is important. However, the solution is not in the pockets of students. They are also facing financial instability. It's not in going through the pockets of people who are having trouble making ends meet that we'll correct the situation of people in the same situation. I think that we can reflect on this situation without removing the principle of fair dealing for educational purposes, and that we can do better.

In 2004, in its decision in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed that the Copyright Act must create a balance between the rights of creators and the rights of users. That is exactly why fair dealing for educational purposes must be maintained. That exemption maintains the balance between the rights of creators and the rights of users.

The situation regarding creators' needs won't be resolved by going through the pockets of students.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We will now hear from Jean Lachapelle.

[Jean Lachapelle, Editor, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, members of this committee, my name is Jean Lachapelle.

I am both a publisher and the owner of an SME that publishes educational teaching materials for early childhood, primary and secondary, in particular.

We are her to review the law passed in 2012. In 2012, at no time did all the actors in the book chain ask to upend one of the very foundations of our Canadian democratic society, namely respect for copyrights. That right protects the creators of intellectual content of all other types. All the exceptions that were included in the law in 2012 had a harmful, devastating effect for the publishing sector. Our profession has suffered a lot and is still suffering.

It has been discussed before me, the famous exception for fair dealing for educational purposes alone is responsible for $30 million in losses for the reproduction of excerpts of works in school systems in Canada and in Quebec.

I just want to draw a link to Copibec, the collective copyright management company, which also has a partnership with Access Copyright, which you surely know in the rest of Canada. Copibec royalties paid to authors haven fallen by 15% since the beginning and, in the rest of Canada, royalties paid by Access Copyright have fallen by 80%. So I think those kinds of numbers show that the education sector must be protected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

I now invite Julie Barlow to speak.

[Julie Barlow, Writer, As an Individual]

Good evening. I'm a non-fiction writer and a magazine journalist. I've been a freelance writer for 25 years now and earn most of my money from copyright. Many people have mentioned figures about the decrease in revenues from copyrights since 2012. I just wanted to speak to you a bit about how concretely that plays out.

When I began as a magazine journalist, I sold first rights for my work, which means that people who bought the first rights were able to publish what I wrote by preserve of the copyright, which is my property. Some people own buildings. I own property. It's called copyright. What's happened since, let's say, the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s is called a rights grab in the magazine industry, which means that in effect, I'm forced to sell that copyright without any more money.

By the way, the starting amount that a freelance journalist earns per page now is the same as it was in the 1970s. There's a pressure on industry. There's no increase in revenues, and writers are forced to sell all of their copyright in one shot in these contracts that take everything, including moral rights, which means people can buy my work and do whatever they want with it. That's the situation for freelance writers right now.

I'm also a non-fiction book author. Of course, most of my revenue as a book author comes from book advances, which are just copyright royalties ahead of time. The situation in the book world means that if I google one of my books—and my books have been good enough sellers for me to earn a decent living—I find a quarter of the Google entries are illegal downloads. This is in an industry, again, where book advances are falling and there's less money to begin with.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Our last speaker is David Murphy.

[David Murphy, Music Editor, As an Individual]

Good evening.

My name's David Murphy. I'm a music editor in the Magog area. We have about a hundred clients and we represent people ranging from Gilles Vigneault to Marie-Mai and companies from “Équipe Spectra” to “ComediHa!“ in Quebec. We thus represent film and television writers, composers and producers.

The environment in which we work is uncertain and it's caused by the time it takes the Copyright Board to reach its decisions. I think that was mentioned several times, but I wanted to mention it because it's harmful to entrepreneurs like me who wait years before receiving their royalties. It's also harmful to users. They are beginning using content and they don't know exactly how much royalties they'll pay.

The basic principle in the Copyright Act is that use requires payment. In private copying, it's exactly the same thing. A system was created in 1996 that applied — in fact, it no longer exists — to CDs and DVDs. We now want to extend it where there are uses and private copying, namely cell phones, laptops and tablets. Someone in the room spoke about the European study, which I also read, in which the addition of...

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You have 10 seconds.

[David Murphy]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you everyone.

It's hard. We have a lot to do and there are several testimonies. We want to hear from as many people as possible. All the testimonies today have been recorded. Our analysts do very good work in retrieving the information.

If you want, you can submit a brief memorandum on our website. It is important for us to hear as many people as possible.

I thank you very much and wish you a good evening.