Evidence of meeting #124 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 piracy.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Edmonton Riverbend, CPC
That's right.
I want to ask about some of the comments that were raised by both Erin and you with regard to piracy. You mentioned large-scale commercial piracy. I'm curious as to what exactly that means. Is that YouTube and others, or is that something else that we're not aware of?
4:50 p.m.
Chief Legal Officer, Canadian Media Producers Association
Yes, I referenced commercial piracy. We're talking about pirate sites, the sites that are wilfully engaged in making money from selling pirated content through various means. That's really the target of the discussion.
YouTube has various business models, but I don't think we're talking about YouTube anymore, because the content that's been put up on YouTube has largely been commercialized. For the most part, some revenues are flowing back to creators and producers on YouTube.
There is a question of whether it's enough money. I know the value gap is real, and we've heard a lot about the value gap between YouTube and other services. The targets of our biggest concerns about pirate sites, though, are the kinds of blatant pirate sites that are commercializing infringement.
4:50 p.m.
Edmonton Riverbend, CPC
Sorry, do you mind going into just a bit more detail on what websites these are?
4:50 p.m.
Chief Legal Officer, Canadian Media Producers Association
The Pirate Bay is the best example. It's an older example, but that's a prime example. I know you've heard of a few others over the last few weeks.
The Pirate Bay, as far as I know, has been largely shut down, but Wendy certainly has the stats on all of those for you.
4:50 p.m.
President, Motion Picture Association-Canada
Maybe I'll knit together some of the comments from your friend as well.
Our position is that really, we try to do three things.
First is to give consumers the access they want, when they want, in the business model they want. You might want a subscription model, you might want to download, and so on. We want to get our content to consumers.
Second, we want to help consumers understand the impact of piracy. That's the impact Stephen has so articulately described to you, but it's also the impact on consumers. Various research has been done. One in three piracy sites contains malware. We've done research on sites that Canadians access. The vast majority of these have high-risk advertisements, scams, porn, and links to sites where your privacy can be compromised. That's what we try to do to ensure that consumers are aware as well.
The third part is to address those sites and services that, as Erin said, operate on a commercial scale.
If we think of it as a pie chart, right now in Canada, or at the end of 2017, 70% of the people who were accessing pirate sites in Canada were doing so through hosting and linking sites. Only 30% of that, at the end of 2017, was P2P, peer to peer, so you can see there has been a change and a shift in the piracy models Canadians are using.
Secondly, one of the largest growing threats is Kodi boxes that have illegal access to IPTV sites and illegal IPTV streams, or illegal hosting and linking sites on the Internet.
Again, we're seeing different kinds of piracy threats, and that's part of the reason we need different tools.
The Departments of Canadian Heritage and Industry, or ISED—sorry, I'm showing my age by calling it Industry—just commissioned a study and found that 26% of Canadians either accessed an illegal stream, downloaded, or somehow looked at or used pirate sites. The majority of those—36%—were movies, and 34% of those were television shows.
4:55 p.m.
Edmonton Riverbend, CPC
Is that research public? Can we get some of that research?
4:55 p.m.
President, Motion Picture Association-Canada
Do you mean the departments' research? Absolutely.
4:55 p.m.
Edmonton Riverbend, CPC
No, not the department's research, the initial research that you mentioned.
4:55 p.m.
President, Motion Picture Association-Canada
Yes. We have a little fact sheet we use about piracy and I'm happy to share that with the committee.
4:55 p.m.
President, Motion Picture Association-Canada
Again, also, not that we need to go into it here but it gives you the three most popular P2P, three most popular hosting, and three most popular linking sites that Canadians use.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you, and if you can forward that to the committee it would be wonderful.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you.
My first question is for you, Ms. Rioux.
I would like to return to one thing in your presentation.
You talked about hosting services exception to protect against value gap.
Can you explain what that means? Your wording is a little confusing to me.
4:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd.
Because of the limitation of time I didn't actually orally address that matter. In our written submission you'll be able to read a little bit more about it. When we defined the value gap, our experience in that has been that there are certain platforms that qualify, or self-qualify, themselves as benefiting from the hosting exception, where we don't believe that they would qualify under the exception because we don't think that they're merely a dumb pipe.
4:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd.
I would rather not name names because we do enter into negotiations over time with some of these types of services. Generally we're talking about user-generated content types of services, but what happens is that our negotiations become much more difficult to try to secure some favourable rates for our rights holders because these services will take the position that they're not really convinced that they really have to pay us any royalties, and that they really do feel that they qualify under the hosting exception.
What we would like to see in the Copyright Act is a change to clarify that the hosting exception does not apply to services that are content providers, effectively, and that offer music in terms of suggesting or optimizing the choice that consumers can see and play an active role in that process.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Parker and Ms. Finlay, you have correctly defined the need to protect Canadian content. Clearly, Ms. Noss is not arguing the same point. That said, everyone agrees that we must protect productions, whether they are Canadian or American. By the way, American productions also create jobs here, that's quite obvious. All three of you are seeking to obtain greater protection vis-à-vis Internet service providers. The notice and notice regime seems much too burdensome to you. You would probably prefer that Internet service providers become more accountable, and even that we implement a notice and takedown system.
Have I correctly assessed your wishes, Ms. Noss, Ms. Parker and Ms. Finlay?
4:55 p.m.
Chief Legal Officer, Canadian Media Producers Association
I can speak to that briefly. We're not saying notice and notice is too onerous. I think that's the ISPs' position on the notice and notice regime. We would say it is useful as an education piece to users, consumers, who aren't aware that they are infringing content, so the notice and notice regime should remain in place. We're not seeking a notice and take down regime. I think around the table and the consistent testimony you've heard is that the notice and take down regime is not very effective. I think that's what our friends in the U.S. would say.
What we are seeking is the ability to seek de-indexing and site-blocking orders with respect to ISP search engines and hosting services.
5 p.m.
President, Motion Picture Association-Canada
Yes, I would agree. Notice and notice was something the ISPs had asked for during the last round of reform. It is an educational tool and it is designed only for people who are using P2P sites. As you can see, that's a small component now of the piracy problem, and in addition, simply sending somebody a notice and then saying if they don't stop it you'll send them another notice is not the most effective tool. However, again, it is a tool that the government gave us and we did use to try to educate people about privacy risk of their computers and the impact on the Canadian marketplace.
I think the French implementation of 8.3—and je suis désolée, I'll say it in English—is really a simple but effective way of articulating it, which is giving the right to order any measure to prevent or to put an end to such an infringement of a copyright, or a related right, against any person who can contribute to remedying the situation, and that's what these intermediaries can do. They can contribute to remedying the situation.
5 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Especially with the “destination” concept, meaning that where the person is located, that's where the rules and laws should apply. Am I right?
Can I ask all of you about the Copyright Board...? Am I done?
Sorry about that. If there is any comment on the Copyright Board review, please send it forward because I think we're working on two pieces and they have to fit. I'm afraid that the government is going to come up with a very nice surprise with the Copyright Board: “Oh, this is how we do it.” Then we'll see where we are sitting with this law and this Copyright Board.
Thank you, Mr. Ruimy.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you.
I don't think that's the way we work here in this committee, but thank you very much.
5 p.m.
Liberal