Evidence of meeting #129 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 copyright.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
You're cut off now.
Now, for the final question of the day, we have Mr. Albas.
5:15 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and again thank you to our witnesses today.
I'd like to go back to Telus, specifically since in your brief and in the subsequent discussion here today you talked a lot about notice and notice and what works in that regime and what doesn't seem to work.
I can appreciate when you say you have a lot of fraudulent notices or information that is incorrect but you have an obligation to pass it on. Do you have any hard data on how often you've received those? Is it one out of every 10, one out of 100, one out of every thousand?
5:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS Communications Inc.
First of all, we might not be able to detect the fraudulent notices at all, right? I wouldn't be able to give you a number on whether we are receiving them, but the potential is there. That's our concern, which is why establishing things like the content and the form of the notices is extremely important and may address that.
As for the notices that we receive that may be too old or may not include all the.... We do research to find if we have any uploads at this IP address, at this date and this time, and how many of those aren't.... We do the work, but it turns out that it doesn't appear to be one of our customers. That does happen a lot. That's the reason automation becomes so important. When you're looking at hundreds of thousands of notices a month, we certainly don't have time to inspect them all in any great detail.
5:15 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
We've heard suggestions from other ISPs around notice and notice, specifically about removing settlement offers and having a standardized form. We haven't heard yet about charging rights holders to forward those notices. Is Telus alone in wanting this change, or do you suspect that other companies would also desire to have it brought forward?
5:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS Communications Inc.
We heard TekSavvy suggest it when they appeared last week. We're not suggesting that it be a cost recovery mechanism but simply that it add some type of cost. That's unlike the Norwich orders, where you have to do additional work in order to be able to find additional information beyond the notice and notice work that's done. There you're talking about cost recovery, and that's what Rogers went to the Supreme Court and obtained the right to do. We certainly support that aspect of cost recovery.
On a notice and notice regime, I think that in order to best balance rights holders and the interests of the innocent third parties here, the ISPs, at least adding some cost—not necessarily a cost recovery, but some cost—will at the very least deter any nefarious use, whether it's fraudulent, whether it's phishing. We're talking about different types of regimes for notice and notice and an element of cost.
5:15 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Okay.
Obviously, you viewed last week's meeting. In the meeting we also discussed the Federal Court's ability—not capacity, but ability—constitutionally to hear.... I shouldn't say “constitutionally”, but I mean its ability to rule on these matters. You may not be a part of the FairPlay coalition, but you do support it.
October 1st, 2018 / 5:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS Communications Inc.
Yes.
5:15 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Do you feel that the Federal Court right now does not have the clarity to be able to hear and to offer injunctive relief?
5:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS Communications Inc.
No, that's not our suggestion at all. We merely suggest that piracy needs to be addressed in many different fora.
The Federal Court is certainly one area; in fact, any court can hear matters of copyright infringement. We believe that they have that ability and they have the expertise. To the extent that court processes may take longer than an administrative process, we believe there may be value in having an additional opportunity for rights holders, another place for rights holders to go.
Piracy is something that needs to be fought on many fronts, in our view.
5:15 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
I appreciate that there are multiple different ways, but Shaw specifically cited that some clarification would be helpful. We're here not only to clarify things like notice and notice and whether it's reasonable to have a cloud-streaming, on-demand-like mechanism for some of the improvements that you want. However, specifically on the clarification at the Federal Court, do you think there is enough clarity right now?
5:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS Communications Inc.
There's arguably never sufficient clarity, especially when it comes to copyright. I think that additional clarity could be useful. Is it absolutely necessary? Perhaps.
5:20 p.m.
Senior Regulatory Legal Counsel, TELUS Communications Inc.
I'll just add to that.
I think what you might be referencing is the point that was made about section 36 of the Telecommunications Act, which stipulates that the CRTC needs to approve any blocking of a website. There is that potential that you have, as an ISP, of a court order telling you to block a website, and yet you can't do that without the CRTC authorizing it first. Some clarity is needed there. Yes, we do agree with that.
If the role of the CRTC and how it interplays with a court order could be clarified, it would be helpful for ISPs.
5:20 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
I have just a quick question. You talked about site blocking. How would you do it? You talked earlier about DNS blocking, which is a completely ineffective system, so I'm just curious.
5:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Broadcasting Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TELUS Communications Inc.
Because we're not part of the FairPlay coalition, I don't think that we've really considered the various mechanisms for doing so. We've been speaking with our technical people, and there are various ways that have different pitfalls. Certainly over-blocking is a big concern. Blocking in the right way that actually is of value.... If we're only blocking something that can be easily overturned, then it's of no value.
It's a complicated question.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
On that note,
I thank you very much for all of your statements, interesting questions, and for your answers which were every bit as interesting. We have a lot of work ahead of us.
Thank you very much, everybody. We are adjourned for the day.