Evidence of meeting #110 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was publishers.
2:35 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
I do want to come back to some of the other comments you made, but perhaps I'll give Mr. Harnum an opportunity for a rebuttal to that statement, if he'd like.
2:35 p.m.
Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
Well, it's hard to rebut, because of course we don't have numbers on the table. The fact is, the number we're aware of is that last year alone in Canada over 600 million paper copies were made of the content of Canadian publishers and other publishers. All the publishers in the association that I most represent, or that I most know at the association—Canadian publishers—have seen their revenue from Access Copyright, from licensing, decline to, in many cases, almost zero.
In the case of creators and authors, these are not people who have bundles of electronic content that are sold through CRKN, JSTOR, or others of the people who have been mentioned today. These are individuals who are writing books. They were used to getting perhaps $600 to $700 per year from their Access Copyright royalties, and they're now getting $90. That's the direct result of the extension of fair dealing.
It's certainly true that for individual publishers who are used to selling class sets, for example, of plays or volumes of poetry to universities across the country, we see that eliminated completely in favour of prepared and made anthologies of print materials that are sold in university bookstores as course packs, where you take a chapter from this book, a chapter from that book, and a chapter from another book, and put them all together. What have you got? You have 10 chapters in a book, you slap a sticker on it, and you sell it. No creator gets a penny from that work.
There's been a kind of red herring set up by a number of people who are talking about this issue, which is that, well, there's so much digital that there's no print anymore. The fact is that digital, in the market for which I'm talking mostly—individual publishers in Canada—still represents less than 15% of the market. Eighty-five per cent of our market is still print. We're losing almost all the university market for.... It used to be.... It was never a huge market and never a huge amount of money, but it could be the difference between profitability and non-profitability. That's the reality.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Am I correct in saying the trend is going to more digital, though? You're saying 15%, but—
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
2:40 p.m.
Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
The trend for going digital in the area that I know, certainly in my business, which is small scholarly publishers and the small university press and others, is definitely flat. We're not seeing an increase. Certainly, other people who have more experience in trade publishing than I do now can I think affirm that: we're looking at between 15% and 20%. That's been pretty much stable for the last several years, I would say.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Mr. Setzer, you're nodding your head. You would agree?
2:40 p.m.
A voice
It's not the experience in the—
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
2:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Publishing, International Publishers Association
Yes, indeed. That's our experience internationally as well. Sales of digital products skyrocketed several years ago and have remained rather constant, between 15% and 25% or something like that, depending, of course, on the type of book and so on. Yes, we agree with that.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Okay. I don't have too much time left, so I won't go into too much else.
On notice and notice versus notice and takedown, you didn't hit on it in any of your comments. Obviously, Canada has notice and notice. Other jurisdictions have notice and takedown. I'm curious as to what your organization advocates for.
2:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Publishing, International Publishers Association
That's something I don't have an answer to. We know that there are different systems throughout the world. I'm not sure if we do have a position on that. I could—
2:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Publishing, International Publishers Association
—investigate and send you an answer afterwards.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
We've effectively eaten up 45 seconds. That's perfect. Thanks.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thanks. You're not giving me any time?
We're going to move to you, Mr. Masse, for seven minutes.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thanks to all of you for being here today.
I'll start with you, Mr. Harnum. On the Copyright Board and its current status, is it of interest to reform it, to improve the speed and the enforcement of decisions?
Maybe we'll go across the panel. How do you think the Copyright Board is—or is not—working at this point in time?
2:40 p.m.
Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
The key issue, of course, is to make the tariff mandatory. That's the first issue for reform. In the document we submitted a few months ago on reform of the Copyright Board, that was one of our key positions. Another important position, of course, is that the penalties are too low. At the present time, the penalties for educational institutions for infringement I think are limited to the amount of the infringement. By that, I mean the cost of the infringement. I think it should be much higher.
If I may, I'll ask my colleague Marian to add her response to that.
May 9th, 2018 / 2:40 p.m.
Marian Hebb Vice-Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
One of the problems is that the Copyright Board doesn't have enough resources to do things quickly, and with the tariffs, for example, one is deciding on what those royalties should be several years after the licence would expire, the tariff had expired, so it's very difficult for school boards to administer and plan. It's completely impossible for the collective to distribute things. You don't know how it's going to turn out. There are terrible problems with the resources of the Copyright Board.
As Bill has said, the fact that it's uncertain that the tariff is mandatory creates a level of uncertainty as well. If organizations can opt out, then who's going to pay if they can opt out?
If I could add something related—
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
No, I have to go across the board here.
I'll come back to you in a few minutes, but I only have seven minutes and I need to get my other witnesses in. I apologize
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Don't be sorry, I need to move across here. I'll try to get back to you, though.
Ms. Caron.
2:40 p.m.
Director, Collections and Membership Services, Toronto Public Library
I have very little experience with the Copyright Board.
I do know that the general feeling, though, is that it is under-resourced and needs to move more quickly.
2:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Publishing, International Publishers Association
I also don't have the numbers or the information specifically to the Copyright Board. I wouldn't have an answer to that.
2:40 p.m.
Copyright Officer and Manager, E-Learning and Reserve Services, University of Guelph
I would agree that the length of time the Copyright Board takes to make decisions has been problematic, and even more problematic is the the fact that payments are retroactive. The post-secondary sector has a tariff that extends back to 2011. When you talk about paying retroactive amounts, that's phenomenal. It's not only the uncertainty, but the amount of money that's sometimes involved in paying a retroactive tariff places an unnecessary burden on institutions.
In terms of the “mandatoriness” of the tariff—if that's a word, and I don't know if it is—I think we have a concern when it comes to Access Copyright and literary collectives generally, because they're not the exclusive rights holders. They own some rights, but there are also publishers and creators who own rights to content, and there are other people who licence the same content that Access Copyright does.
Making the tariff mandatory effectively takes the choice away from an educational institution like the University of Guelph in terms of where we want to purchase those rights from. If we want to be able to negotiate with someone and get more favourable rights than we can get under the tariff, it's a more responsible way for us to spend the public funds that we're given for that purpose if we can do that.
We would definitely be opposed to a tariff being mandatory.