If they produce a sound recording of a musical work, that sound recording could theoretically generate royalties that will allow the performer or musician to continue their career. This income is essential so that the musician can continue to perform in small venues.
Right now, sound recording generates some royalties under the equitable remuneration regime, but it practically no longer generates any under the private copying regime.
The private copying regime applies to compact discs, and the good old audio cassette, but it no longer generates royalties, because a regulation has been added to the Copyright Act. That regulation means that the definition of “audio recording medium” in the act excludes Micro SD memory cards, among others. This means that new media that could generate royalties for performers are no longer applicable.
Private copying in itself favours three categories of rights holders: authors, performers and producers. So the whole music industry is covered by this regime. The private copying regime applies only to blank CDs, which are now unusable. When I say “unusable”, I mean that they are no longer used for reproduction.
Limiting the audio recording media on which a levy could be applied reduces a large portion of revenue. I can give you a number. I'm not sure whether representatives from the Canadian Private Copying Collective appeared before the committee, but I can say that they have seen their revenues drop by 89%, which is a huge percentage. That was a sum of money that the collectives paid to performers. This meant that, at the end of the year, after putting on concerts, selling t-shirts, producing albums, and recording television shows to boost the sale of the albums, among other things, so when the whole ecosystem was operational, the performer generated enough money to live on.
Right now, I can compare the Copyright Act to Gruyère cheese. It is only one of the intellectual property laws currently in force in Canada. There is the Trade-marks Act, the Patent Act and the Industrial Design Act. All those acts mean that Canada should, in principle, be fertile ground for innovation.
Today, the Copyright Act is like the poor cousin or ugly duckling. The Trade-marks Act is relatively robust. If tomorrow morning a university decided to open a hamburger restaurant called McDonald's, there would be a good chance that McDonald's would intervene, because that would be a violation of its trademark.
So why is it possible for a university, under the fair dealing exception for educational purposes under the Copyright Act, to reproduce literary works or musical works? It's because the legislation contains exceptions, and that's why I'm talking about the Copyright Act as a coherent whole. Right now, it is approximately 160 pages long, while the one on trade-marks is 80 pages long. This piece of legislation is complex and cumbersome, containing a number of exceptions. If Canada really wants to be a breeding ground for innovation, it must ensure that all intellectual property laws are effective for all creators, not only for companies like McDonald's, which can benefit from the Trade-marks Act—