My name is Jean-François Cormier. I am from ACF in Montreal.
We're basically a non-theatrical rights representative for Canada, meaning that we manage public performances for major studios and films. Our role is to make sure that public performance licences are issued for all types of public performances using basically commercially available movies. We've been in business since 1966. We've been operating across Canada for about 30 years, and we operate in basically any and all types of public institutions, private business, and government. Any type of public performance of a movie, in a park, in a school, in a library—anywhere, basically—has to be licensed with us since we're the rights representatives for specific studios and the films they represent.
An example of what we do is that movies in the park in municipalities during the summer have to be licensed. We also license public libraries for film events they might have for small or large groups. We license school boards and schools for leisure movie presentations. We license the Alberta legislature. They want to show movies in one of their buildings, so we license all across the board.
It's pretty straightforward. We have a set number of studios and films we represent, and our licensing is for those. We have about eight or nine employees, and a lot of our revenues and licences previous to the last copyright changes were from educational institutions, colleges, and universities that paid a licensing fee in order to present commercially available movies, classics, and new films, either in film classes or any type of class that might use film.
Obviously, the new changes affected us in a very negative way. Probably up to 35% to 40% of our sales and overall revenues were affected, because right off the bat, any type of presentation that occurred for educational purposes in schools, colleges, or universities no longer required a licence.
What we found over the last five years is that definitions that were in the last Copyright Act were general. They weren't nailed down, so educational presentation is used in various situations. In classrooms for curriculum needs, it's clear and it's acceptable, but in all sorts of other situations, we find that there's a lot of—from our perspective—abuse. For example, in a school, Friday night movie night with families and kids at 7:00 p.m., for them it will be an educational presentation because they're using a culturally significant film, I don't know, like Toy Story or something. To us, it's not an educational presentation; it's a leisure presentation. We have to fight a lot of these types of situations. We're a small company, and we don't always have the time or energy to make sure everything is respected across the board.
Over the last five years, we've spent most of our time trying to police those types of situations as best we can. We don't have any difficulties with any other types of situations—public performances in any other type of organization aside from schools—but we found that in schools, there are a lot of grey zones, and we tend to be on the losing side of the argument when it comes to grey zones.
Hugo, is there anything else you want to add?