Evidence of meeting #122 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 music.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
I think the important thing is that if you were to go the fund route, then we're not worried about impacting consumers.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
Yes, but it could be the long term. The point would be that the government is recognizing the importance of performers and others getting paid for this type of copying.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
If we want to look at a levy as a long-term route, how can we fairly put a levy on devices when—you could tell me if I'm wrong—you could buy a device and not use it for any copyright infringement activity?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
They can do it in France. There are lots of places around the world that do this. It's just a question of measuring and estimating, and then allocating. There are very sophisticated algorithms that would be able to do that.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
In my last 30 seconds, would you say there's no better way that you can think of to implement a levy than to put a levy on devices?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
Well, I personally think it should be a fund.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Yes, and that's clear in the testimony, but is there any better way than a device levy that could be recommended?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
Not if you want to compensate, no.
4:50 p.m.
First Director, Public Interests Research and Communications Inc., Border Broadcasters, Inc.
May I just supplement? I think that the U.S. Congress offers an excellent example here.
To protect television stations, they diversified beyond copyright and implemented a retransmission consent regime which just required the distributor to obtain the consent of the signal owner before content was retransmitted, and that simple consent requirement instilled a negotiation between the two parties, and it evolved. Initially it wasn't about obtaining fees, but as the market matured and as the industry shifted, they came to market-negotiated settlements, and government was not involved at all, and it's sustained by being palatable for the consumer. They have value in what they're providing, and consumers will pay for it.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This has been very valuable testimony.
I'm going to pick up on your point there. Could a consent regime work in the music context?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
This is the first I've heard of it. I have no idea.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
It's interesting because if what happens is that content gets created, and if the distribution channel needs to have a consent mechanism, and if there's another jurisdiction that's already doing that, but if we haven't heard of it, then how broadly does that work in the U.S., as an example? Do we have anything comparable?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
I don't know, but it sure sounds complicated to me.
I think that the beauty of our proposal—and it is an industry-wide proposal—is to simply employ a fund. Cut the Gordian knot, make it simple, and come up with a solution that is palatable, that doesn't immediately impose any burden on consumers. It's the Government of Canada and the people of Canada acknowledging that these copies are being made, and people should be compensated, and we can do it quickly without thousands of hours of testimony or study.
June 12th, 2018 / 4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Beyond the four years then, we talked about moving towards a system where there could be levies, and then the levies would actually generate the income. If I think about it at the macro level, the income of the content creators has been so disrupted because of the overall disruption following the emergence of the Googles, YouTubes, etc.
How do we get to a place where in that rebalance the content that is created by the creators then has a fair compensation in the new world? A fund is a fund, but presumably somewhere down the road you're going to have to increase it because there's more content generated, etc., so that's not sustainable.
4:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
No. I think it's absorbing a lot of attention here today, but it's actually a minor piece in the puzzle.
The bigger issue is getting that marketplace working again, and you get the marketplace working again by getting rid of all of these cross-subsidies, all of these negotiating imbalances that were imposed on the creative community.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
It's mostly the Copyright Act. That's where all these exceptions sit, and so there is a power on this committee. If you choose to, you can make changes that can impact Canadians almost immediately, instead of waiting years for studies.
I know we have to go through this process, but if you look at the $1.25 million, you see that it was something that was supposed to be transitional. It was a thing of the moment, and it somehow stuck around, and the same would be true of the sound recording exemption. These are things that were, “Okay, let's make an exception. This is a new right. Oh, boy, this could be really bad.” Well, now we know it's not that bad and so now is the time. Now that we know how badly creators are being impacted by it, let's feed money back.
Meanwhile, streaming, we hope, will continue to grow. Streaming rates will continue to rise. The marketplace is rapidly shifting. If I asked you or you asked me five years ago what the future would be, we probably all would have thought it was digital downloads. Digital downloads are going to be the first to almost completely disappear. Do you know what's actually going up? Vinyl. Vinyl's a big piece. Five years ago I might have said it's all digital downloads. Today, is it all streaming? I don't know. Let's wait five years.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
I'm going to share a bit of time with David.
Do I have any time?
4:55 p.m.
A voice
Pardon me, may I just supplement, ma'am?
