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.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
Your suggestion would be that we draft a section in the act to require the government to do so. You think that should be done through legislative change, don't you?
5:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Wikimedia Canada
From what I understand, crown copyright is defined by section 12 of the Copyright Act. I think that if this section were amended, the government could be forced to put these documents in the public domain.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
One of my colleagues asked you a question about other countries, particularly in Europe, where governments would give free access to their information. Do you have any data on that?
5:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Wikimedia Canada
No. As I said earlier, I don't have that information on hand. But we could send it to you.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
Excellent.
In fact, what we would like to know is what kind of data the different governments make freely available. We would also like to know if there are any conditions that must be met for this data to become accessible.
You also said that governments, especially the U.S. government, said that taxpayers had already paid, through their taxes, for the production of these documents, which is why these documents and research must be accessible to the public.
Are there other organizations in Canada that support this position?
5:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Wikimedia Canada
Yes, absolutely. For example, a brief was submitted before this committee by Creative Commons, which supports the same position.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks again to all of you for your patience today, as well as for being here.
Mr. Swail, I want to continue down the road about the educational use of copying. Since 2012, a lot of schools have stopped paying educational copying tariffs to the copyright collectives. Schools contend that while their practices have changed, they remain respectful of copyright, but authors and publishers are saying that their revenues are dropping. Some of that might be because of the change of use of materials. We see your graphs showing the declining purchase of textbooks, which are different from the curves we saw last week.
In terms of the act that we're reviewing, what are your views on educational copying? You made a comment earlier about the undermining of collective licences. I keep thinking collective licences might be part of the solution that we might want to be looking at within the act.
5:05 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
Collective licences are certainly one potential solution. We wouldn't say they're the only solution, but they have proven over time to be a very efficient one. Educational institutions certainly have options to license directly from publishers and other content providers. We expected that we would see an uptick in some of that direct-to-publisher licensing, but that really hasn't happened.
Our view would be that collective licensing as we have known it—prior to 2012—is actually a pretty efficient way for institutions to license the reproduction rights and sell their uses for occasional uses, for somewhat ad hoc uses. The main concern we see now is copying on a scale that we don't feel is really consistent with what one would think of as fair. At the crux of that, as I mentioned, is the whole issue of proper commercial compensation for copyrighted materials.
5:10 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
That's why we would like to see language in the act that reintroduces the importance of the marketplace and the commercial viability of that reproduction as paramount.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
Is there a difference between K to 12 and post-secondary? Would the act benefit from separating those or would we be looking at something that would cover all education?
5:10 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
Their practices are different, but I think the principles are consistent enough and important enough that there wouldn't really be.... On the spot, I can't think of a meaningful division between the two for the purposes of the legislation.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you for both of those answers.
The other area I'm interested in and that I don't have a lot of knowledge about is indigenous concerns. I've participated in indigenous reads. I'm aware of indigenous authors. I'm working with our local bookstore in terms of knowing which authors are indigenous. How can we help indigenous peoples better protect their traditional knowledge and the published knowledge that they're putting out?
5:10 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
One of the things I pointed to in my remarks was around digital solutions. We know that in terms of the presence of Internet access, etc., on certain first nations communities and territories, it is not always consistent. Certainly, to the degree that first nations learners often tend to be distance learners, we think digital solutions can be extremely helpful.
What we're pointing to is an opportunity to continue to drive money towards the creation of those resources so that they can be accessed in a more efficient and simple way, can be done over great distances, and won't require the more traditional physical presence in classrooms. That's a part of our transformation and transition. It's a sector that's important, I think, to maintain.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
I have a minute left, Mr. Hinds. You talked about the use of locks. Maybe this ties in with the digital discussion of how we protect digital media and make sure that authors and creators are paid for what they put up digitally.
The example you gave was to go and get a picture on the other side of a lock and bring it back across, which sounded to me more like an enforcement than an actual.... The law might be there, but people are finding ways of getting around the law. Could you speak to how digital copyright could be embedded in the act?
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
When we went through this discussion previously, we always thought there was so much of an emphasis on tampering with locks and that kind of thing which we thought that once it was locked up, it was going to be locked up. Usage has now come to the point where that is no longer the case, and if you have legitimate access to it.... We have yet to see a court even enforce the terms and conditions of the licence of even accessing it. There are some cases going through the courts on that, but I don't think we're super hopeful.
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
It would be interesting to see, right? We haven't had a definitive ruling on that, but we wait with hope. If it were locked down, and it were locked down and the terms and conditions of the contract that you agreed to as a subscriber were enforced, I think that would go a long way.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Mr. Hinds, on that point, how do other countries get around the digital locks with regard to the WIPO treaties?
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, News Media Canada
I think it's a challenge for everybody right now. Most of them don't have as strong a fair dealing.... Certainly, the European countries don't have as strong a fair dealing regime as we do; I mean, it's a quote. It's more of a quote, so you don't have the same flexibility if you want to do it. The U.S. has the same challenges that we do.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Mr. Swail, do you have any comments on TPMs or digital locks?
5:10 p.m.
President, Canadian Publishers' Council
For our member publishers, the integrity of that protection is critical to allowing us to move to more of an online way of serving our customers so that we can safeguard the intellectual property we're mounting and putting forward for the education sector in particular. E-books would be a good example. Unlike ad hoc and limited amounts of physical copying, for us the importance of TPMs is that it allows us to have a sustainable model for password protected Internet access to platforms that really are at the heart of what we can do from a technology perspective to help learners in the classroom.
They're critical for us going forward, absolutely.
