We are before you today on behalf of SODRAC, a collective rights organization that manages its members' reproduction rights and copyrights. Our members are creators of artistic works: authors, composers and music publishers. We make it easier for users to use our repertoire of works on all streaming platforms, in order to fairly compensate our members for their work.
Our main recommendation to the committee is to introduce the droit de suite in Canada for creators of visual arts and crafts. However, we are speaking to you today on behalf of our members who are authors, composers and music publishers. As such, we are representing their songs and audiovisual works.
Users need two rights to use music: the right to the work and the right to the sound recording. We represent the right to reproduce the work.
Our organization has been managing collective rights for more than 33 years. We issue transactional licences and blanket licences to users doing business in Canada, or with Canadian consumers. We collect royalties from these licences, and we redistribute them, as soon as possible, to our members and to collective rights organizations outside Canada.
SODRAC is a member of BIEM and CISAC. The latter is the world's largest network of authors' and composers' societies.
We firmly believe that the Copyright Act should allow all rights holders to monitor the economic life of their works, no matter how they are used, and to benefit from the potential economic gains that ensue from the use of their work. We are against contracting practices that require paying lump sums, because they undermine the notion of property and dispossess creators, which goes against the fundamental principles of copyright.
In parallel with your review of the act, we participated in a consultation related to the Copyright Board of Canada. Today, we wish to testify on the essential role the board plays.
SODRAC is a member of CPCC. As such, we support its recommendations to have a technologically neutral private copying system and an interim compensatory fund in the meantime. We are also in favour of including audiovisual and artistic works in the private copying system.
That brings us to the more specific points we would like to submit to you. On that note, I'll give the floor to Mr. Lavallée.