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.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
I'll ask Mr. Chan a question about Facebook.
When a television show or report is broadcast on Facebook, clearly the media that paid to produce it doesn't receive any advertising revenue. It's seen as a form of sharing by the user. At least, that's how I explain it.
Don't you think that the media that share content on your platforms would like to receive a portion of the advertising revenue that you generate?
4:55 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
Thank you for the question.
Do you mean that when a broadcaster puts a show of their own volition on Facebook, should we not think about ways to compensate them for that?
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Since the audience is there and since they may feel that they want to be seen like that demo guy who plays a song and wants to be discovered by an L.A. producer.... Then we have CBC putting a series on your thing and there would be zero revenue.
4:55 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
Without alluding to too many specifics of the future, I think you're right that what we want to do is find new ways of compensating various entities that have presences on Facebook. I think around the world we have experimented with things like ad breaks for videos, almost like a digital version of a commercial break. I think over time as we refine this model, this experiment, we certainly hope to be able to present a more robust suite of compensation options for producers.
I don't know, Probir, if you have anything to add on that.
4:55 p.m.
Head of Global Intellectual Property Policy, Facebook Inc.
I would also point out that one of the functionalities of Facebook is to complement these offline business models. I think my colleague from Google mentioned this. In a lot of ways you find users connecting and sharing around a shared viewing event on TV, whether it's sports, whether it's an awards night. It actually, in many cases, has increased engagement offline. I wouldn't look at it as a zero-sum game; I would look at it as a win-win opportunity.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Yes, but on the other hand we know that if it was just sharing, it's sharing and it's visibility, but you also sell advertising and so you're eating the pie.
On this, didn't you voluntarily agree that in mid-2019, you're going to add GST to your transactions, even though you're not forced to do it by the government?
4:55 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
That's correct. What we have indicated is that by the end of 2019 we will move to what's called “a local reseller model”, where we are going to have a base of operations in Canada such that the taxes that we pay, based on revenue that we make in Canada from the sales team in Canada, will be transparent and people will know exactly what we take in and what taxes we pay.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Would all advertising bought in Canada be going through this advertising sales team in Canada?
4:55 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
I'd have to check on the precise mechanics of it, but certainly the sales team in Toronto—
4:55 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
Yes. Because we're moving to this model, it means that it becomes subject to a value-added tax like the HST or the PST.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
We still have some time, so we're going to go to the second round.
Mr. Longfield, you have seven minutes.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you. I'll share some of my time with Mr. Graham.
I want to start off with Facebook. As I'm listening to this conversation, which has been excellent, I'm going back in time to when I used to buy records in the 1970s and 1960s. We knew that to buy content, you went to the record store and you purchased what you wanted. You might share it with a good friend and you'd put your name on it so that you knew it was yours, and you would chase your friend to get the album back. Sometimes you got it back and sometimes you didn't.
The sale was for a particular piece. Now we have the Internet taking the place of the record store. We have a business model that's very different.
Mr. Price asked a very good question at the end of one of his testimonies. If we clamp down on this, we would limit the distribution of content, but so what? People would have to purchase. The business model would go back to the way it used to work. I could be cynical and say it didn't work that well for creators back then either, because they got ripped off on contracts and they had management.... The creators have always been on the last end of the stick.
In terms of the business model, as we look at how we get money to the creators through this existing business model, we looked at the EU and they've been doing some things around legislation. We've looked at Australia. They're doing some things around legislation. You're a global company and it's a global problem. Is there anything you can suggest to us in terms of recommendations on how we get value to the creators for the products we consume?
5 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
I think first and foremost, as I alluded to at the beginning, Facebook is a platform where largely people can get discovered and they can find fans, new fans, and that actually is of tremendous value not just to artists and creators but to NGOs, including also politicians, as you may know, on the platform.
Far be it from us to say what the committee should do on these sorts of questions, but I can say that for us on the platform, we do recognize the need to build new tools to allow for artists and creators to be able to monetize. Right now in Canada, in music, basically our issue with how we deal with it is largely on the enforcement side. If there is copyrighted content on the platform, we will take it down. We want to get to a space where we're able to help artists get remunerated for that sort of stuff, but that is, I think, down the line.
Probir, do you want to talk a bit about that?
5 p.m.
Head of Global Intellectual Property Policy, Facebook Inc.
I think what's animating our view is to first understand all the aspects of the music ecosystem. You have some here today. You've heard from others.
Really, the marketplace is shifting in such great ways. For example, what the European Union is doing is based on an assessment three or four years ago, and the world has changed in a lot of positive ways. From our perspective, any new regulation or rule you look at should take into account all the different pieces of the ecosystem, but it should also look to enshrine voluntary approaches whereby different parts of the ecosystem are coming together to promote content, figure out new technologies to smooth out the transaction costs, and things like that.
That's what I think is at greatest risk when you have regulatory processes: not allowing for these types of flexible approaches. Right now Canada has a flexible but robust system that we certainly support.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Yes, and you mentioned the democratic aspect of the platform. It's a great way for us to showcase our communities and the work that's going on in our communities. You're not the bad guys here. It's just that we'd like to see how we can support our artists so they can get paid fair value for what they produce.
5 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
With two minutes left in this round, I wanted to tie up some loose ends from earlier when I talked to Mr. Kee, Mr. Chan and Mr. Mehta about the content management systems you have.
You talked about having IP experts who review all the requests that come in. I'd like to get a sense of the quantity. How many people are processing how many requests per day? Are these people taking the time to look at two or three requests in a day, or do they have 400 and they have to get through to the end of the whole collection before they leave?
5 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
Again, in our transparency report that we just published a few weeks ago, we do spell out in detail the number of requests we're getting. I think you can see it at facebook.com/transparency. I think that's the URL. It's something like that.
Globally, we had about half a million requests, and that led to about three million pieces of copyright—
5 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
How did half a million requests result in three million...?
5 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Facebook Inc.
It could be multiple requests, or one request where we find multiple copies on the platform.
5 p.m.
Head of Global Intellectual Property Policy, Facebook Inc.
Yes. In fact, as Kevin noted in his opening remarks, you can report multiple posts. You can report groups, videos, texts. We want to make it as user-friendly and frictionless as possible, so in one report you can have multiple listings. Again, that is something that all gets processed by our global IP team.
5 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Okay.
Mr. Kee, you mentioned that you had found three billion infringing URLs earlier. That's across how many domains? Do you have any idea? One domain can have millions of URLs.
5 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
I'd have to double-check on that. It's quite a number, but it's basically several hundred thousand domains.