Thank you for the invitation to come and speak.
My name is Robin Sokoloski. I'm the executive director of Playwrights Guild of Canada, an organization that for 46 years has worked to protect and promote playwrights. As someone who has worked for the last 10 years at Playwrights Guild of Canada, I know how challenging it is to both protect the work of Canadian artistic creators and ensure that the work of our artists is made accessible.
I appreciate your investment of time and consideration on the complexity of copyright, especially within this rapidly changing landscape.
I'm here today to provide insight on how artistic content, from the perspective of my members—over 900 Canadian playwrights—is impacted by what is currently in place in our copyright legislation. I'll do what my members do best, and start with a story.
About a year ago, one of Playwrights Guild of Canada's most prominent members, David Craig, was invited into a classroom to discuss his work. David writes plays specifically for young audiences, a genre of theatre that, when skilfully crafted, can create an enormous amount of positive change within a young person, amongst those characteristics being a greater sense of empathy and respect for others. You can imagine David's dismay when he walked into that classroom to see each student with a photocopy of his entire play in front of them, a play that is published by a Canadian publisher, Playwrights Canada Press, and a play that we at Playwrights Guild of Canada received government funding for to make sure it is readily available to the public.
I share this example with you today to articulate, as clearly as I can, the inefficiencies that have erupted given the ambiguity contained with our current Copyright Act, namely, the uncertainty revolving around one word, education.
Education was not defined when it was added as a purpose for fair dealing under the Copyright Modernization Act. This led to the education sector unilaterally adopting their own copyright guidelines. These copying guidelines were recently ruled as unfair, in both their terms and their application, by the Federal Court of Canada. However, the copying practices of the education sector clearly continue to persist. I know you are all well aware of these accounts, but what it means to Canadian playwrights is this. Since 2011, Playwrights Canada Press, the publisher of this book, has seen a decrease in revenue that it receives from Access Copyright of 86%. That's $28,000 in 2012 to $4,000 in 2017. This is a revenue source that is utilized to publish more Canadian plays.
Individually, my members have reported to me that a drop in income from book royalties has been catastrophic, an 85% reduction over five years, resulting in a loss of income of thousands of dollars. These real-life examples speak to the numbers you've been hearing repeatedly, such as the 600-million pages of copyright-protected content that is being copied for free each year by the education sector. This number does not include content licence through academic libraries or made available under open access licences. The 600-million pages that you keep hearing about resemble the pages in this book.
We all need to do our best possible job in educating the public on the value of the arts and our artists in this country. At Playwrights Guild of Canada, we administer amateur rights licences to schools that wish to perform our members' plays on their stages. We are finding more and more that we are having to chase down schools that have neglected to seek permission in advance of production. As soon as this is drawn to their attention, schools fulfill contracts retroactively without any difficulty. This is because copyright law gives Playwrights Guild of Canada the ability to ensure its members are paid for the use of their work.
However, I bring this to your attention, as copyright is clearly slipping from the forefront of people's minds when utilizing the intellectual property of others. There are a number of things that need to be done to generate a thriving environment for both artists and students in this country, many which I feel obligated, as the executive director of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, to see through. There are some recommendations—just two—that I bring forward to you to assist in fostering a healthier environment in which to create and learn.
First, Playwrights Guild of Canada believes the education category of fair dealing should be removed from the Copyright Act. Leaving this word up for interpretation has led to misuse. The trial judge on the York decision concluded that there is clear evidence that free copying under the education sector's copying policy substituted for the sale of works. Despite the ruling of the court, the behaviour of the education sector remains unchanged. There is simply no justification for treating Canada's artists as uncompensated suppliers. Removing this word “education” saves all parties involved from what seems like the endless litigation that is currently taking place.
Our second recommendation would be to promote the return of licensing through collective management organizations such as Access Copyright.
As I'm sure you've been made aware, after the act was amended in 2012, the education sector throughout Canada, with the exception of Quebec, abandoned collective licences and stopped paying mandatory tariffs. To put it plainly, as a national organization, my members' work continues to be licensed by the education sector in Quebec, while members' work in the rest of Canada is almost completely unlicensed.
Creating a solution that provides simple, inexpensive access to copyright-protected works while fairly compensating artists already exists in collectives such as Access Copyright. This solution can easily be promoted by you by harmonizing the statutory damages available to collectives.
Right now, only two copyright collectives, SOCAN and Re:Sound, can seek statutory damages between three times to 10 times the value of the tariff. Collectives such as Access Copyright, which is the collective that is set up to distribute royalties to my members, can now only collect the price of the tariff.
Making this change will have a huge impact, as it will deter infringement, encourage settlement and increase judicial efficiencies by reducing the endless litigation that I previously mentioned.
The measurement of good policy is the well-being of the community. The divisiveness that has been augmented by the changes made to the Copyright Act in 2012 does not make for a healthy community to work, live and learn in. The recommendations that I bring forward to you today are a win-win for both the artistic creators in this country and the students they inspire.
Thank you.