Evidence of meeting #139 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 facebook.
A video is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
I have a very quick one for you that I will let you think about, but you might not get a chance to answer.
For Google and Facebook especially, when HTML 4.01 transitional was the standard for the Internet, everything more or less worked across platforms. Now a lot of the social media companies and Google are no longer platform-independent, so when you go to Facebook on a BlackBerry or on an iPhone, you get a completely different experience in each place. Are we going to come back to a standards-based system, or are we going to keep having this diversion of capacity, depending on what device you're using?
5:05 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
We will double-check on our end, but I have to admit that one of our strengths actually has been that we have sort of a one-interface process at Facebook. Regardless of whether you access it on an iPad or a phone or your desktop, it is going to be the same experience for the user or for the page across our platform.
If you mean interoperability between various platforms, certainly we've invested a lot of time and energy to allow for individuals to be able to download all their information and take it with them elsewhere if they see fit.
5:05 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
With regard to some of the comments Mr. Kee made earlier today about the difficulties of contextualizing, I guess through your Content ID filters into fair dealing, you referenced that it's very difficult for that system, so even though we create laws, the system itself is the one that's going to have to recognize and adapt. That may involve appeals and whatnot. It might involve technological review, but also perhaps personal review.
Mr. Kee, what are some things this committee can do to make life better for those content creators so they can upload the content they have made that's original or that they have paid for through various tariffs, so we can see more of that content being supported and not bound up either in appeals or through those technological guards? What things can we do to make the system better for them?
5:05 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
To be honest, this is really a matter of how the platforms operate individually. Your line of questioning is highlighting the tension that inherently exists, since on the one hand we invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars in effective enforcement so that rights holders can properly administer their copyright across our platforms, while on the other hand we also have other classes of creators who are basically more in the user class, who utilize other people's copyright in the course of creating their own. Essentially, we have to manage all of this.
Copyright is an extremely complex beast. Again, Jeff alluded to this in his opening remarks with respect to the number of creators. Every single time you create something, you vest a copyright in that whether or not you're actually utilizing somebody else's copyright in that process. Navigating this extremely complex web is extremely challenging and requires a balancing of the various interests. On the one hand, we have a copyright management system; on the other hand, we have an appeals process to balance off those kinds of issues.
Essentially, from a legislative standpoint, this is something that's very much between the individual platforms and the users and creators who utilize those platforms. The best thing the committee can do is to look at things to ensure we have a competitive environment with a number of competing platforms in order to exert discipline on all of the platforms so that if one platform has a copyright management system that is being overly aggressive, there will be alternatives for them to look to.
5:05 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
How do you create that space when you have Googles and Facebooks that are dominating in their size and scope? I don't want to incriminate or anything, but that's one of the arguments I hear: that they have become so big that no one can compete with them.
5:05 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
There are actually quite a number of competitors that exist out there when we consider that Dailymotion and others are looking to compete in the space in their own individualized ways.
To be honest with you, Facebook and Google are actually fierce competitors in this space, especially as each of us is expanding into different kinds of related areas, such as Instagram TV, etc., etc., where basically creators have a number of different options available to them, which also is what helps the platform stay healthy.
5:05 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
I haven't heard of Dailymotion, but when you give one example, and then say “etc., etc.”, are there other ones?
5:05 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
Yes. To be honest with you, I'm blanking at the moment. I would be happy to provide you with more examples of platforms that exist in a number of different territories.
5:05 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Okay. That's fair.
Mr. Price, my line of questioning has been mainly towards some of the other witnesses. My first question is very tough: Old Pixies or new Pixies?
5:05 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
You and I are in the same.... I have to say that. I'm pleased to hear that.
We've heard at this committee, and it was in one of the analyst's reports, that one of the main complaints is that Spotify will contract directly with the money for labels to access catalogues, and then none of that money goes back to artists.
Isn't that an issue that artists have with labels themselves? Isn't your own experience proof of that?
5:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Audiam Inc., As an Individual
Yes, which is why the disintermediation of the label is so fascinating.
One of the biggest challenges I've had sitting here is being quiet. To be honest, there were so many times I wanted to jump in and say, “Wait.”
Remember from the do-it-yourself perspective that these are artists who are their own record labels. There is no middleman between them and their money in regard to the revenue for the sound recording.
With all due respect, the statement that there is no direct licence between some of the digital services and Canadian songwriters is patently false, depending upon what country you're in. In the United States, the DSPs—digital service providers—are required to go directly to the owners of the lyric and melody to get a licence with them directly and pay them directly every single month on the 20th of the month for the revenue they earned from the previous month.
There are plenty of mechanisms in place to assure they can figure out who has what split. The number one way they can do this is by saying, “We won't make the sound recording live until you tell us, record label”, and I can assure you that the record label will move heaven and earth to figure out who's supposed to get what money, because they need that sound recording live because it's their whole economic ecosystem.
In order to get artists paid—I've been thinking a lot about this—frankly, number one, artists need education. They don't understand what rights they have and what rights they don't have. They don't understand the difference between a sound recording and a musical composition. Let's start there.
Now let's move to the idea that you can't escheat someone's money, that you can't take someone's money and give it to somebody else who doesn't own the copyright; we just passed a law in the United States that now allows that to happen to Canadian citizens. If you're unaware of the Music Modernization Act, it says that your revenue can now sit in the United States in a newly formed organization called the mechanical licensing collective. If you don't understand in Canada and you become a member of that organization, your money can now be legally taken from you. You can't have black boxes anymore.
We just landed a rover on Mars today, for God's sake, and we can't figure out who owns copyrights? Come on.
When you move into how difficult it is to license, I agree—it is difficult. You know what? The music industry is hard. It's hard to learn how to play an instrument. It's hard to learn how to market and promote yourself and tour. It's hard to build Google. It's hard to build Facebook. This is a difficult industry, but that doesn't mean that we should turn around and take the people who create the stuff and say, “We're going to make you our employees so that we can accomplish our goals.”
I'm sorry, I'm getting off on a little bit of a tangent. It's just that some of the things I've been hearing I fundamentally disagree with.
So remove the black boxes, hold onto the money till the copyright holder is found, educate the artist community so they understand what rights they possess and where they can go to enforce those rights to collect their money, and then ensure that the DSPs using the music follow the laws. If you don't have the licence, don't use the music, and if you don't know whether you have the licence, you don't have one, so don't use it.
Thank you.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think it is super-important that we hear the creators' point of view. We all know there are consumers. In French, we say droit d'auteur and in English it is the right to copy, and the droit d'auteur is completely the opposite.
I want to clarify something here, because in reading the analysts' document, your position right now.... I'm going to switch to French.
You've just told us how it should work and reminded us that we need a licence to use copyrighted content.
If a song is played on YouTube or Spotify, it's understood that the song involves a recording, a producer or a company, a label or an artist. In other words, the song is associated with a phonographic copyright symbol and another intellectual property symbol on the packaging, a “P & C” in musical jargon. It costs money to use the master tape. Once the money has been paid, will the owner of the master tape pay the copyright fees to the people who composed and wrote the song?
5:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Audiam Inc., As an Individual
I now know what you sound like as a French woman, by the way.
5:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Audiam Inc., As an Individual
To answer that question—
5:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Audiam Inc., As an Individual
—in the United States, we did have something like that. It's called the pass-through. The burden was on the record label or the distributor. They would be required to get the licence from the Dolly Partons and then also to remit payment to them.
The music publishing community in the States pushed heavily against that because it was a layer between them and the money, and they had no way to audit that sort of middleman. We pushed aggressively to remove that middleman with streaming services in the United States. The U.S., as you're aware, is very different, for some reason, from the rest of the world, even with mechanical royalties, these Dolly Parton royalties. I'm a big proponent of not having the pass-through. I believe that if you're going to use someone else's stuff to make money, which is totally fine, you have to know whose stuff you're using, get a licence, and make a payment.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
In this case it means songwriter, composer and production owner of the master tape?
5:15 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Audiam Inc., As an Individual
Yes, it's the birth of the sound recording to the music services—Spotify, Google Play and even Facebook. Facebook is not, by the way, a music service; Google Play is, Spotify is, but Facebook is not. It's a distribution. The place that sends the sound recording to the Spotifys of the world or the Google Plays or the Apple Musics has the unique opportunity to provide the suite of information necessary, because that's its birth.
Frankly, the digital services, in my opinion, should make a requirement in the technical specifications that when the information is sent to them, they should include not only the information around the sound recording—for instance, it's the Beatles recording Let It Be off the Let It Be album—but they should also simultaneously include who wrote it: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and the name of the entity that works for them if they hired one to do it. Now you have the full suite of information right there. If it doesn't come in, then don't make the recording live.
I'll hearken back to the political talking point that will solve about 90% of these problems that I keep hearing about—which, frankly, are not true. If you ask somebody if they know what songs you wrote—Bob Dylan's my client—he says these are the songs he wrote. If you go to the kid in Toronto, they will tell you what songs they wrote. They know; it's just no one's asked them for it.
There is a benefit to collection agencies working on behalf, because it reduces friction to licensing for these organization. It allows scale, and I'm a big fan of that.
