Yes. I mean, let's face it, we had a licensing system in place before that was working. People may have disagreed about percentages, but still, it was working to some extent.
Am I right?
He's been at this a lot longer than I have, and has far more background.
From a writer's perspective, I made documentaries for years, for CBC and others, and whenever we wanted to buy somebody's archive footage, my wife and I had to purchase a licence to use that. It was always a licence for a limited time, usually about seven years, and it gave us permission for the commercial use of that footage for those seven years. After that, we didn't have the permission to use their stock footage. Therefore, we also couldn't sell our finished film that contained their stock footage.
It was a situation I understood and agreed with. I knew that those were the rules of the game. You buy a licence and you pay. Why would it be different for writing a book? I don't think it should be.