Evidence of meeting #123 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 levy.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
President, Re:Sound Music Licensing Company
They're both affected at the same rate, because they participate 50% in the income.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
4:15 p.m.
Vice-President of Public Affairs and Executive Director, Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo
If I may, I'd like to add something about the rate of the publishing revenues. I would submit that you should take all of the revenue of the sector into account. It's clear that publishing revenues are increasing, but at the same time there's other revenue that is dropping as rapidly as publishing revenues are rising.
You have to look at the whole industry if you want to have a clear picture, because if you look only at one point, sometimes you don't have a clear sense of what is going on. As I said in my speech, in Quebec, we experienced a 72% loss in sales, and we're still there.
It's a huge problem. You have to take everything into account.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
4:20 p.m.
Vice-President of Public Affairs and Executive Director, Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo
Sorry.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
Before we continue, Ms. Bouchard, you were referencing some studies.
Would you be able to forward them to the committee, please?
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
You have probably answered a lot of these questions a number of times, so I appreciate your patience, but I think it is important. We have heard a lot of testimony from artists and creators that there seems to be a lot of money out there, but they're not receiving it.
With regard to the $40 million or $42 million that you've arrived at, the gap there—
4:20 p.m.
Chair, Canadian Private Copying Collective
You're referring to private copying?
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Yes.
How do you determine which artists and what percentage they get of that, and so forth, because the first thing I'm going to get is a request for an explanation? How do you even know who has been pirated more than others and how it's divided up?
If you're saying on the one hand that this is a critical part of how to stabilize artists' lifestyles and creativity right now, my concern with that being seen as a solution is what happened in the past with the effort to tax memory cards. There are several problems with that, but the most important one is that they diminished in value quite significantly. You have to take into account the depreciation that happens in the marketplace with any device subject to the remuneration of whatever you want to call it, a tax, a levy, a fee, or whatever you're getting back. You're making it either dependent upon a fixed fee at a particular date in time, or you're always trying to come up with the $40 million.
How do you get to the $40 million? How does it affect local artists, and how is it determined? I would imagine that some artists are getting ripped off more than others, depending on their popularity.
Could you shed some light on that? I'd appreciate it.
4:20 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Private Copying Collective
Just to take those two questions that I think I hear you asking, the $40 million is our approximation based on sales volumes. Our revenue depends on what the levy rate is set to by the Copyright Board—
4:20 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Private Copying Collective
—and the sales of media or devices. Looking backwards at sales of smart phones and tablets, which are now used for copying music quite extensively, we just did the simple math. But certainly, as we said, the rate itself would be established by the Copyright Board with regard to evidence on the extent of the use of those media and devices for copying music. The rate gets set, the sales are what they are, and that's what determines the revenue. We're just trying to give a sense of one way of looking at the impact of not having maintained a technologically neutral levy regime.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
What does it translate to? Say it's an artist in my community of Windsor West, what does that $40 million mean for them?
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
What do they get out of it in terms of fixing...? I'm hearing this is a response to lost income and to support the arts and culture in—
4:20 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Private Copying Collective
—we need to be clear that what we're talking about here is the use of intellectual property. We have to decide as a country if we want to remunerate the rights holders for the use of their work. If we do, there are lots of ways we can do it. The private copying regime is essentially the best system that anyone in the world has come up with to best approximate the value of that use of the right is. Some people talk about it in terms of lost income, but, frankly, it's income that's earned by rights holders in intellectual property for the use of their work. I've been trying to come up with a good analogy. I'm not sure how good this is, but I'll try it out on you.
4:20 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Private Copying Collective
For instance, I pay Bell for my Internet services at home. I also pay Bell for my mobile network services. I also pay Bell for my television services. Those are three different services, three different uses of Bell's service offerings that I consume, and I pay separately three times. Because I pay for my Internet service at home, it doesn't mean I've already paid Bell and that I don't, then, need to pay them for my mobile network services. Similarly with rights holders, copyright is a bundle of rights, and every stream of income from a copyright is essential to cobble together, hopefully, a living so that you can continue to create and produce and thrill Canadians and the world with your work. With respect, private copying levies are payment for a service, for that service that's different from any other use. So, yes, we should get paid when our work is streamed. We should get paid when our work is used in audiovisual works. We should also get paid when people make private copies for their own use, because if the copies didn't have value, then no one would make them.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Yes, I get that. The problem that I hear, in terms of the response, is that, for example, if everybody speeds, then we should just divide up the speeding tickets from everybody, because if you actually buy this device, you're a law-abiding citizen who has an interest in providing this. For example, we have a lot of seniors who are transitioning to personal devices. I would be interested to find out their habits. I would suspect they're doing less pirating. I know from the work we've been doing on my digital rights policy, they're just getting into using digital devices for basic services and so forth. They use it in a much more limited way, for a very specifically scoped activity, whether it be for an online service or whatever, and they end up paying the cost for a general problem. So it's balancing.
Perhaps you have a comment on that. That's just one of the things that—
4:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Private Copying Collective
Certainly.
Every medium, every device, that has been levied around the world, is used by some people and not by others. It's used for music copying. It's used for other purposes. As I say, if we agree with the principle that there should be some form of payment, we simply need to come up with the best possible way of making that happen, so that, first of all, we come as close as we can to having the users, who are making the copies and benefiting from that right, being the ones paying the rights holders; hence, our preference for a levy system, as opposed to a government fund, for example.
