Evidence of meeting #118 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 copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Fair dealing for newsgathering. For example, if I want to read a certain newspaper, I have to pay. As I understand it, if I went to one of these aggregated sites I would get around paying for that same article. I would get it free.
3:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
I think one of the things we were disappointed with is that we thought when this legislation came in that the paywalls would protect us, but what we've found is that you can go behind the paywall, take the content, and then put it out in the public domain.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Theoretically, could Google pay for one licence, and then, once they have that licence, take every single article with that licence and put it...? Could they take only 10% of the paid newspaper or—
3:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
We have a really good example of this from Brunswick News, one of our members in Moncton. During the case of the Moncton shooting, there was that somewhat iconic photograph of the shooter walking down the street. Brunswick News had that behind a paywall, and it was for subscribers only.
The public broadcaster went behind the paywall, took the photo, and put it on their site—attributed, but put on their site—and made it free for use. Again, Brunswick News has a business to run, and their copyright was taken and put in the public domain.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I understand your concerns on that. How would you see the copyright rules being rewritten to address that?
3:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
I think there are two or three ways. If you look at it right now, we've seen examples in Germany and Spain where government has moved to limit copyrighting titles and things like that. The European Union is looking right now at a new copyright directive that has a publisher's right, a publisher's stand-alone right, such that publishers would have a separate right to control their content.
Another option we've looked at that I think would be an amendment, if you want, to the fair dealing principle would be a sort of “hot news” exemption. This is something that has been developing in U.S. case law. There is a Court of Appeal case in the U.S. called the Motorola case, and it is really about Motorola stealing NBA information and putting it up there. Really, what the courts have said is that under the hot news provision—they've used the 24-hour rule—for the first 24 hours fair dealing doesn't apply, so the generator of the copyright retains that ownership for the first 24 hours.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
In another committee, we're heavily into the Facebook scandal and the concern for people's private data, let alone that you've written something to sell. For example, if I go to see my doctor and he emails me my information, it might get routed to the States. In that routing, they'll take all my private medical data. I have no control over it.
There are these arguments being made that all data should be owned by someone. Is that in line with something that you're looking for?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
I think what we view strongly is that if you create something, you should have a right similar to a film or music. I think the music industry has been very effective at establishing their rights of ownership for their content, as have the software and film industries. I think what we're saying is that as an industry where information and data are becoming more important, we would like to own that right, and again, for commercial purposes. I think we have to be clear on that.
4 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
We're going to move to Mr. Jeneroux.
You have five minutes.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here.
I want to start with Wikimedia.
Your organization is responsible for running probably, arguably, one of the most popular websites in the world, making it a lucrative outlet for advertising. However, your organization continues to opt out of putting advertising on Wikipedia. Can you explain the rationale behind your philosophy?
4 p.m.
Vice-President, Wikimedia Canada
I will answer in French, if that is okay.
The reason we don't post ads is because we want to remain independent. In our view, knowledge and expertise should not be influenced by external organizations. It is this reasoning that explains why we haven't become a commercial platform. We really want to remain independent and provide people with a product they can trust: knowledge and expertise developed independently by a neutral body.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Have there been conversations within your organization, perhaps going down a future path in which you'd look at advertising? Is it the philosophy of Wikimedia and Wikipedia to stay away from advertising?
4 p.m.
Vice-President, Wikimedia Canada
As I mentioned at the beginning, Wikipedia sites are operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is based in the United States. Wikimedia Canada is an independent organization. So I couldn't answer for all the sites. However, according to what is published, we have no intention of commercializing or advertising. This is one of the priorities of the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Swail, I appreciated your presentation. Connect me and the committee a little bit with your relationship with Access Copyright and the type of royalties that you receive from a group like Access Copyright and how they would be reinvested.
4 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
I can certainly do that.
Our affiliation with Access Copyright is really through the individual firms that are members of the Publishers' Council. Pearson Canada, for example, would be an affiliate of Access Copyright. It would therefore be in receipt of royalties from Access Copyright that reflect the model of usage for those resources that are used in the education sector under collective licensing, which as we know, has now been greatly reduced in Canada.
The figure of $30 million that I mentioned in my remarks, I think, has been in front of this committee before. It's a fairly good estimate of the income that flowed through Access Copyright to both publishers and creators in the sector over the course of many years when collective licensing was more prevalent than it is today. Half of that $30 million would essentially flow back to creators, individual writers, and other contributors. The other half would effectively reside with publishers for decisions around reinvestment in Canadian content.
That was the gist of my remarks around investment, that contribution back to publishers and creators—in my members' case, to publishers—is critical to support the return on investment that they can expect to find in a Canadian marketplace. That's what we would like to see restored through legislative change.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
On that, can you speak about the role that multinationals play in the Canadian educational publishing sector?
4:05 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
Sure. Among our members are firms like Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Nelson, Scholastic, and on the education side, Wiley and Elsevier. Depending on how you would measure it, it's reasonable to say that we're probably doing in the vicinity of 80% of the paid commercial business that is done with schools, universities, and colleges across Canada. One big player that's a member of ours is Nelson, which is a Canadian-owned firm, or at least a Canadian-based firm; it's actually owned by some hedge fund money out of New York, I think. These are all global players.
The other element that I was pointing to in my remarks was that these firms all have alternatives to investment in a market like Canada. They could be the U.K., Australia, China, India, Latin America, etc. Most of these players have footprints right throughout the globe, and attracting investment to build Canadian resources for Canadian students and educators is really based on fundamental return on investment criteria that they see being met in the marketplace. The undermining of collective licensing casts real doubt on the viability of this market for those global players who can invest that money in lots of other places.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you.
Mr. Masse, you have five minutes. After that, we're going to suspend to vote and then come back.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When we get this done, we'll report back to the minister, and then the minister will review our work and report back to us. If he wants to change the legislation, it will likely have to go back out again. It would be highly unusual for him not to have a comment.
Do you have any way, regulatory or otherwise, to prioritize things as needing to be done immediately? Do you have any thoughts on the Copyright Board?
I'll start with Mr. Hinds and then go across. What would you consider to be low-hanging fruit, things that can be accomplished without having to go through legislation?
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
It would be hard to do without legislation, because you'd have to deal with the fair dealing clause for news. I can't say whether legislation would be required.
With respect to the Copyright Board, it's not really a Copyright Board issue, in the sense that we would be dealing with the real legislative framework.
4:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Wikimedia Canada
In our view, legislative changes are not an option if the Government of Canada's publication licensing system is to be changed. That is the main argument I support.
If we want to avoid having to amend the act, we suggest not changing the term of copyright. Currently, copyright expires 50 years after the author's death. We have heard that this duration could be modified, but we suggest not touching it. This would avoid having to amend the act.
Otherwise, the safe harbour rules would have to be improved. For example, in addition to Wikipedia, we also have Wikimedia Commons, where we host user-generated content. If they violate copyright or other laws, we would not want Wikimedia to be responsible. Its users remain free to act freely.
4:05 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
On that question, I would point to the opportunity through the reform of the Copyright Board, which is under way almost as we speak and certainly will be this year, to examine statutory damages in some of the language. This has been pointed out both in the submission that our organization made and in the many other submissions by other organizations.
The effective goal, as we're saying, would be to harmonize the statutory damages criteria in the act, such that there are meaningful penalties for violation of copyright law. This exists for some sectors in more meaningful ways than in other sectors, and that imbalance is something that can and should be addressed, and can be addressed outside of legislation according to our understanding of the Copyright Board reform process that's right in front of us. Probably the most important thing we would encourage is to set the bar to have consistency for penalties involved in copyright violations.