Industry Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Welcome, everybody, to meeting number 141 as we continue our legislative review of copyright.

With us today we have, as individuals, Georges Azzaria, director of the art school at Université Laval; Ariel Katz, associate professor and innovation chair in electronic commerce at the University of Toronto; and Barry Sookman, partner with McCarthy Tétrault and adjunct professor in intellectual property law at Osgoode Hall Law School.

From the Canadian Bar Association, we have Steve Seiferling, executive officer, intellectual property law section; and Sarah MacKenzie, lawyer, law reform.

You will each have up to seven minutes. Then we will go into our questions. Hopefully, we will have time to get it all down.

We'll start with Mr. Azzaria. You have seven minutes, please.

[Georges Azzaria, Director, Art School, Université Laval, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about copyright. With 186 witnesses having appeared before this committee, I hope everything has not been said.

I am the director of the art school of Laval University in Quebec City, and was previously a professor in the law faculty at Laval University for 15 years.

I will start with some general comments.

Making law is about ideas, priorities and objectives. A neutral standpoint does not exist, and a proper balance does not exist. Dozens of testimonies gave you dozens of points of view that were called balanced; none were neutral. The legislator is always making choices. That's nothing new. You all know that, of course.

Copyright law takes into account authors' rights, art practices, the concept of property, the concept of work, the concept of labour, the concept of public, and technologies. Copyright law is a cultural policy, and there are many ways to build a copyright law with these concepts.

Copyright was, historically, a way of providing revenues for authors through reproduction, retransmission, etc. In Canada, for the last 20 years, copyright has been impacted by three forces: law, jurisprudence and technology.

First, here are a few words about the law. The 2012 modifications enforced many new exceptions, among them fair dealing in education, and none of them included remuneration for authors. It was a major step back for authors.

In jurisprudence, I will remind you that, in the 1990 case Bishop v. Stevens, the Supreme Court of Canada quoted an old English decision, saying, “the Copyright Act...was passed with a single object, namely, the benefit of authors of all kinds”.

But there was a shift in 2002. The Supreme Court in the Théberge case wrote:

Excessive controls by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole....

In 2004, in the CCH case, the Supreme Court invented a user's right, saying, “The fair dealing exception, like other exceptions in the Copyright Act, is a user's right.”

Théberge and CCH are based on a mythology that the authors may hide their work and not let the public get access to it.

Third is technology. With the Internet, access to art and the democratization of creation are great, of course, but they are pushing aside authors' rights and remuneration. We have witnessed the arrival of a new type of author who is not interested in copyright protection—such as Creative Commons, here before this committee—and doesn't need remuneration. With new technologies, legislators, not only in Canada, have kind of abdicated and let private corporations make the law. This is the case with Google, which redefined fair use and remuneration with Google Books, Google News, Google Images, and YouTube.

There is a shift that benefits everyone—the public, Internet providers and Silicone Valley corporations—except the authors. It's what we call a value gap. The combined result of law, jurisprudence and technology is a decline of copyright protection for authors.

I suggest that making the law means working with studies. What were the economic effects of the 2012 amendments? Did authors get more or less royalties?

Since the arrival of the Internet, authors' incomes have decreased. We did a study a few years ago in Quebec with the INRS and the ministry of cultural affairs, showing that revenues are becoming micro-revenues. I think Access Copyright, Copibec, L'Union des Écrivains and a lot of people came here to tell you that revenues have decreased.

On the other side, what are the revenues of Internet providers and Silicone Valley corporations? Did they decline?

Artists should be better protected as a social and cultural value. This is not a question of balance. The message is quite simple. If art matters, we must care about authors. The general principles of the Canadian act respecting the status of the artist should be followed.

I'll run through a couple of proposals.

First, as a general proposal, you should make the wording of the Copyright Act much simpler. The wording is quite a mess at some points. One example is that no one can really explain the distinction between non-commercial purposes, private purposes, private use and private studies. Confused and complicated rules are usually not followed.

Second, you can fix what was, in my opinion, broken in 2012. Take away all the exceptions of 2012, or keep them but add a remuneration mechanism. Canada has to comply, as you know, with the triple test of the Berne Convention. The idea is to replace authorization with a royalty, a global licence model like the private copying regime of 1997. The private copying regime was a way to answer to a technology that gives the public the possibility of reproducing work themselves and provides remuneration to the rights holders.

Third, add a resale right. I think RAAV and CARFAC testified in that sense. A resale right is a tangible way of expressing support for visual artists.

Fourth, create a fair dealing exception for creative work, which means to clarify the right to quote for visual artists and musicians.

Fifth, give a greater role to copyright collectives. They are the tangible way of making copyright functional by giving access and providing royalties. Perhaps you could think about extended collective licensing, and that could be an answer.

Sixth and finally, think about perhaps including a provision for professional authors, something that would be more coherent with the Status of the Artist Act and the notion of independent contractors.

I will conclude by saying that the question for us is to see from which perspective we are looking at copyright. The challenge is to act, as you know, like a legislator and not like a spectator.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Ariel Katz, from the University of Toronto.

You have up to seven minutes, sir.

[Ariel Katz, Associate Professor and Innovation Chair, Electronic Commerce, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

My name is Ariel Katz. I'm a law professor at the University of Toronto, where I hold the innovation chair in electronic commerce. I am very grateful for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon.

In my comments today, I would like to focus on dispelling some of the misinformation about the application of copyright law and fair dealing in the educational sector.

Since 2012, Access Copyright and some publishers and authors organizations have embarked on an intensive and, unfortunately, somewhat effective campaign, portraying Canada as a disastrous place for writers and publishers. This campaign, which I call the “copyright libel against Canada”, was built on misinformation, invented facts and sometimes outright lies. Regrettably, it has slandered Canada and its educational institutions, not only at home but also abroad.

I debunked many of the claims in a series of blog posts four years ago, when the campaign started. I encourage you to read them. I also invite you to read the submissions and posts by Michael Geist, Meera Nair and others. I'm happy to provide the links to those.

Nevertheless, the copyright libel persists. It persists because it presents three simple, correct facts, wraps them in enticing rhetoric and half-truths, and then tells a powerful yet wholly fictitious story.

Here are the three uncontroversial facts.

Fact number one is that over the last few years, and especially since 2012, most educational institutions stopped obtaining licences from Access Copyright, and Access Copyright's revenue has declined dramatically. This is true.

Fact number two is that, as a result, the amount that Access Copyright has distributed to its members and affiliates has also declined significantly. This is also true.

Fact number three is that most freelance Canadian authors, namely novelists, poets and some non-fiction writers, earn very little from their writing. This is true.

All of that is correct, but what is incorrect is the claim that the changes in Canada's copyright law and the decisions by universities not to obtain licences from Access Copyright are responsible for the decline in Canadian authors' earnings.

First of all, as you've already heard from some witnesses, even though universities stopped paying Access Copyright, they did not stop paying for content. Indeed, they have been paying more for content than they paid before. Most publishers are actually doing quite well, and some are doing extremely well.

Now you may wonder, if educational institutions aren't paying less for content, but more, then why do the earnings of Canadian authors decrease rather than increase? That seems to be the question that puzzles this committee. I'll try to help you with that.

To answer this question, we need to get into the details of Access Copyright's business model and consider things like these: Which works are actually in its repertoire? Which authors are members of Access Copyright, and which aren't? What type of content is generally being used in universities? How does Access Copyright actually distribute the money it collects?

I'll try to answer these questions. The logic behind Access Copyright's business model has been deceptively simple and attractive. Access Copyright would offer educational institutions a licence that allowed them to basically copy every work they needed without worrying about copyright liability. It would charge reasonable fees for the licence, distribute the fees among copyright owners, and everyone would live happily ever after.

This sounds great, except that this model can work only if you believe in two fictions. First, you have to believe that Access Copyright actually has the repertoire it purports to license. Second, you have believe that a cartel of publishers would provide an attractive service and charge reasonable fees. However, good fictions do not make good business models.

Access Copyright has never had the extensive repertoire it purported to license. As a matter of copyright law, Access Copyright can only give a licence to reproduce a work if the owner of the copyright in that work has authorized Access Copyright to license on her behalf. It would have been a copyright miracle if Access Copyright actually managed to get all the copyright owners to appoint it to act on their behalf. They never have been able to do that.

Access Copyright has always known that it didn't really have the legal power to license everything that it did, but that knowledge has not stopped it from pretending to have virtually every published work in its repertoire. Practically, Access Copyright has been selling universities the copyright equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. However, as a matter of copyright, not only can Access Copyright not license stuff that doesn't belong to it or to its members, but its attempt to do that constitutes, in itself, an act of copyright infringement.

Yes, you may find it surprising that Access Copyright has, in my opinion, committed one of the most massive acts of copyright infringement that Canada has ever seen, by authorizing works that don't belong to it or to its members.

For many years, educational institutions were quite content to play along and overlook the limited scope of Access Copyright's repertoire. They did that because the licence agreement contained an indemnity clause. It basically told universities, “Don't worry about whether we can lawfully give you permission to copy those works, because as long as you continue paying us, we will protect you. We'll indemnify you should the copyright owner come and actually sue you. We'll take on the risk.” As long as universities paid the sufficiently low prices, they were happy with this “don't ask, don't tell” policy. They just continued paying and thought that they were protected.

You would expect that if Access Copyright collected money for the use of works that aren't in its repertoire, it would then refund the money to the institution that paid—that overpaid—but that's not how Access Copyright works. Instead, it keeps the money that it collects for works that aren't its own and distributes this money among its own members. This is principally the money that has now all but disappeared and that you hear a lot of complaints about.

At this point, it is important to consider which authors are actually members of Access Copyright, which aren't, and what type of works are actually being used in universities.

In general, except for a handful of courses in the English departments, Canadian universities don't teach Canadian literature. When they do, students actually buy those books. As U of T historian and English professor Nick Mount recently wrote in his book Arrival: The Story of CanLit, “At eleven of Canada's largest twenty universities, English and French, you can complete a major in literature without any of it being Canadian.”

This may surprise you, but it shouldn't. Most Canadian universities are serious academic institutions. The works they typically use for research and teaching are academic works written by academics, some from Canada, but in many cases from elsewhere. Canadian universities are not parochial schools but serious academic institutions. They are members in good standing in the global enterprise of science. The study of contemporary Canadian literature is only a tiny fraction of that enterprise. Moreover, most academic authors, the ones who actually write most of the works that are being used in universities, aren't even members of Access Copyright.

According to Stats Canada, there are 46,000 full-time teaching staff at Canadian universities. Most of those are active authors who write and publish—otherwise they'll perish. Some faculty members are members of Access Copyright, but most are not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I'm sorry, Mr. Katz, but we're going a little bit over and we have a tight schedule. I will ask you to wrap it up quickly, please.

[Ariel Katz]

Okay.

There are 46,000 full-time academic authors employed by Canadian universities, and Access Copyright has only 12,000 writer members. U of T alone has more writer members than Access Copyright. In other words, the vast majority of works that you use in universities are not written by members of Access Copyright.

Where is this money that the authors and members of Access Copyright used to get? They don't get it anymore. Where did this money come from? It came from Access Copyright collecting money for everything, even though it did not own everything. Whatever it didn't own, it kept for itself and distributed this money to the authors. That worked as long as the model worked, but eventually it could no longer sustain the flaws that underlay this model, and it collapsed. That's the money that is now gone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

[Ariel Katz]

It has very little to do with copyright and very little to do with fair dealing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you. I'm sure they'll have lots of questions for you.

We're going to move on to Mr. Barry Sookman. You have seven minutes, please.

[Barry Sookman, Partner with McCarthy Tétrault and Adjunct Professor, Intellectual Property Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wish this were a debate about Access Copyright, so I could spend my seven minutes replying to what you've just heard.

Thank you very much for the opportunity of having me appear today.

I’m a senior partner in the law firm of McCarthy Tétrault. I also teach intellectual property law at Osgoode Hall Law School. I know about copyright in theory and in practice, and I want to share some of my thoughts with you today.

A key reason copyright exists is to create a framework encouraging creators to develop and make works available and to ensure they are paid appropriately for their creative efforts. You have heard many arguments in favour of broad exemptions and free uses of works. In these remarks, I want to provide some guidance to help you analyze many of the conflicting submissions you've heard, especially by those who oppose reasonable framework laws required to support a vibrant creative community and functioning markets for creative products.

I intend to focus on decoding for you certain norm-based appeals and misleading arguments made to oppose reasonable framework laws.

You have heard appeals for exceptions to copyright relying on the norm of fairness; however, a fair dealing is a free dealing, and a free dealing should be understood for what it is. Free is not necessarily fair, nor is it fair market value. Courts in Canada have developed a unique, expansive framework for determining what is a fair dealing. But whether something is fair as a matter of law cannot be dispositive as to whether it is actually fair and in the public interest. This is especially true because the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a dealing can be fair even if it has an adverse effect on the market.

You should not conclude that the addition of “such as” in the fair dealing exception, as some have advocated for, would be no big deal and would simply add flexibility to the act. The appeal to the flexibility norm reflects a judgment that compulsory free dealings should be expanded to uses not expressly permitted or even imagined by Parliament. This was rejected in 2012, after being opposed by practically the entire creative sector, including in a major submission to the reform process.

You have heard appeals for exceptions in the name of balance, but the concept of balance does not provide any useful guidance for copyright reform any more than it provides a principled framework for reforms to tax, energy or other laws. You should be mindful of norm-based appeals for reforms based on balance where not supported by principled justifications. Supreme Court decisions on copyright often refer to balance, but some mythical balance in itself is not what the court teaches. Rather, the court teaches that the complementary goals of copyright are to encourage the creation and dissemination of works and to provide a just reward for the creators. These are the goals this committee should focus on.

You have heard that exceptions are needed to promote access to works and to foster innovation. Creators fully support a framework that promotes broad access and innovation, but free access as a guiding norm is not consistent with encouraging new investment by creators or paying them properly. Broad exemptions and limitations in rights also result, as Georges just indicated in his remarks, in value gaps, where creators cannot negotiate market prices and are not adequately compensated, or compensated at all.

Opponents of creator rights often justify piracy, arguing that it is fundamentally a business model, and that creators should, in effect, make content available at prices that compete with those who steal and distribute their content. This business model defies basic economics. A similar argument against providing creators the rights and remedies they need is that they are successful even despite piracy or because they’re paid for other uses or have other revenues. The “they are doing just fine” argument is really a normative judgment that creators should not have a copyright framework that will enable them to achieve their full potential—what they could produce and earn but for piracy and uses not paid for.

The “they are making money in other ways” argument is another normative judgment that creators should not be paid for valuable uses of their works by others, such as when they innovate to bring new products to market, even though those innovations don't cover the lost revenues on the other uses.

The bottom line is that the smoke-and-mirror arguments are premised on the normative judgment that it is justifiable to acquire and consume a product or service for free, essentially forcing the creator to subsidize uses and even piracy on a compulsory basis. These are assertions most people would never advance outside of the copyright discourse.

You are told that laws that would help tackle online piracy, such as site blocking, should not be enacted. There are over 40 countries that have court or administrative website-blocking regimes. This is not some experiment, as one witness has told you. These remedies support functioning marketplaces that are otherwise undermined by unauthorized pirate services. Numerous studies and courts worldwide have found website blocking effective in countering piracy and promoting the use of legitimate websites, and to be fully consistent with freedom of expression values.

We can learn from international experience. The United Kingdom is currently studying expanding its regime to include administrative blocking. Australia has just enacted a law to expand its site blocking to search engine de-indexing.

When people oppose reasonable remedies against blatant online theft and leave no stone unturned arguing against creators having a framework law that enables them to control the uses of their works and to be paid a fair market value for such uses, you should question why. In particular, you should question what moral compass and values underlie these arguments and whether they comport with norms that this committee is prepared to accept for copyright or in any other situation.

I thank you for the opportunity to appear today, and I look forward to any questions you might have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Finally, from the Canadian Bar Association, we have Mr. Steven Seiferling. You have seven minutes.

[Steven Seiferling, Executive Officer, Intellectual Property Law Section, Canadian Bar Association]

I'll let Ms. MacKenzie start.

[Sarah MacKenzie, Lawyer, Law Reform, Canadian Bar Association]

Thank you very much.

I'm Sarah MacKenzie. I'm a law reform advocate with the Canadian Bar Association. Thanks for your invitation today to provide the CBA's input on the Copyright Act review.

The CBA is a national association of over 36,000 lawyers, students, notaries and academics with a mandate to seek improvements in the law and the administration of justice.

Our written submission, which you've received, represents the position of the CBA's intellectual property law section, which was developed in consultation with members of other CBA groups. The CBA IP section deals with law and practice relating to all forms of ownership, licensing, transfer and protection of intellectual property.

I am here today with Steve Seiferling, an executive member of the CBA IP law section and chair of the section's copyright committee. Mr. Seiferling will address CBA's comments on the Copyright Act review and take your questions.

Thank you.

[Steven Seiferling]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members.

Although our submission goes into a number of issues that I'm happy to take questions on, I want to focus on two that actually have something of a common theme: the best use of judicial resources, or judges, with respect to copyright law. In the two areas I want to highlight, we have created an unnecessary and burdensome use of the court system, in which court applications are required. We question whether there is something short of court applications that would apply, or that would work in many cases.

The first area, which you haven't heard a lot about, despite the number of witnesses Mr. Azzaria noted, is anti-counterfeiting and imports. You haven't heard a lot on that area.

Currently, where a brand or copyright owner has registered with the Canada Border Services Agency and an uncontested counterfeit is discovered at the time of import at the border, an importer can simply fail to respond, be hard to reach or be non-responsive in their response for a short 10-day period. That's the limit on how long the Canada Border Services Agency will hold goods without a court application. If a court application is not filed by the end of the 10 days, the goods are released to the importer.

The CBA section is proposing that for uncontested counterfeits—we're not talking about a legitimate claim about whether the goods are proper—when we have an affidavit or statutory declaration from the brand owner or the copyright owner, the goods could be destroyed or seized without the need for imposing an additional burden on the courts, and without the need for a court order.

You have heard a lot about the second area that I want to talk about. This is notice and notice.

The Internet is borderless, and our laws are not. Our current system, even with very recent amendments and proposed amendments, only allows us to deal with copyright infringement online when three things exist. Number one, the alleged infringer is in Canada. Number two, the alleged infringer can be identified, so they're not falsifying, masking or spoofing their ID or their IP address, which is pretty common when we're in this type of area. Number three, the rights holder actually files a claim. That's our system in Canada. Once again, we're taking up court time and resources.

The reality is that most infringers are not located here in Canada and they'll ignore a notice provided by an intermediary. Notice and notice ignores the borderless nature of the Internet. If we're going to absolve intermediaries of liability in Canada for infringement claims, the least we can do is adopt a notice-and-takedown system, which allows rights holders a greater ability to protect their copyrighted works and recognizes the issues posed by a global Internet.

Let me give you an example. Let's say that someone goes online to my law firm website and takes my picture. They set up an account on, say, the Toronto Maple Leafs fan site. I'm an Oilers fan, so if you put me on the Leafs website, that's not necessarily appropriate. Then they talk about how much I appreciate the Leafs, with my picture attached.

My recourse as a rights holder is to file a notice with the intermediary, with that website, which they would pass on. I get a limited amount of information back, which I may be able to use to file a claim, if I have identifiable information. The claim is useful only if the person who set up that false account is in Canada, can be identified and has not masked or concealed their true identity. Meanwhile, everyone thinks I've become a Leafs fan.

I use this example somewhat jokingly, but what if we change the facts to associate me, or anybody whose picture is available online, with organized crime or something a lot more problematic than the Toronto Maple Leafs fan site? We have the same enforcement struggles.

By continuing to use notice and notice, we in Canada fail to recognize the global nature of the Internet and its users.

Those are my introductory remarks, and I look forward to any questions you might have on that or any other issues raised by the CBA.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Before we jump into our round of questions, I need to let everybody know that we need about 10 minutes at the end. We have to discuss our final three meetings and some of the challenges that have come up. We'll save some time at the end for that.

Mr. Longfield, you have seven minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody, for coming as witnesses to this important and confusing study. We have had a lot of different opinions, and we purposely brought you folks in near the end, to help us sort through what we've been hearing.

I want to start with Mr. Azzaria.

When you're talking about the author royalties and incomes decreasing, and the democratization of technology versus the creators being paid for the works they've been working on, it seems we have a lack of transparency in the system. In trying to get to where the system breaks down, do you have an opinion on where we need to be focusing our efforts in terms of creators being paid?

[Georges Azzaria]

There are a lot of things to say. What I was trying to say is that democratization of creation is a great thing. Your neighbour is making art, and that's fantastic, but the problem is that your neighbour is now in competition with professional artists who want to make a living with their artwork. Because he's giving away his work, he doesn't care about copyright, but the professional artist does.

There are a lot of ways we can try to find a mechanism to separate that. This is just a hypothesis. I'll just speak generally, and maybe afterwards we can make some distinctions. You could have an opt-out system, where everybody is in a collective society but then your neighbour could opt out if he wants, because he doesn't care about copyright or he doesn't need copyright to make a living. The other way would be to have something that would be coherent with the act respecting the status of the artist and the professional relations between artists and producers in Canada, which you may know.

It's actually quite an interesting act. If you read the general principles, they really focus on how artists are important to our society and everything. That's with the professional artists. That would be another way of thinking about things, saying, “Well, we have two types of creators: professionals and non-professionals.” I'm not saying they're “amateurs” and what they're doing is not good; I'm just saying that some want to make a living with copyright and some just don't care. The ones who don't care are slowly starting to argue that copyright is not important for anyone.

I don't know if that was a clear answer for you.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes. The barriers to entry are low, so a lot of people can get in, but we should have a way of separating out the ones who need to earn a living.

[Georges Azzaria]

It's a hypothesis. If you work with that second hypothesis, it would be a kind of opt-in situation. However, then you'd have to have all the collectives agreeing with that, because it might be something funny in terms of the Bern Convention.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to flip over to Mr. Sookman, and possibly the Bar Association.

In looking at the five-year review that we're in the middle of right now, we had testimony last meeting that this is way too frequent, that the Supreme Court is still dealing with the previous review. Some of the cases are just getting through. We don't know whether the law is working yet, and now we're going to start changing the law.

Do you have any comments on how frequently we're doing this review? The testimony also said that we're helping a lot of lobby groups, but we're not really helping society by doing this review so often.

[Barry Sookman]

It's worth bearing in mind that while there's a five-year review, Parliament has quite a bit of scope to determine the extent to which they want to review the entirety of the act. Technology is changing. It's putting enormous pressure on all stakeholders. This is one of these areas. Given that copyright is such an important framework law, having it reviewed and making sure it works is important.

The other thing is that we've actually had quite a bit of Supreme Court jurisprudence on this. We can already see on the ground that there are problems and that there need to be some solutions. I would suggest that in the next five years in the Internet world, where it's seven years for one, we have to have 35 years of experience. I would say that reviewing the act every 35 years is a good idea.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay, we'll get that testimony to review that testimony.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

What does the bar association think? You also mentioned the load on the courts, which is also a very interesting piece for us to be considering.

[Steven Seiferling]

I'll comment on the five-year review, and then I can comment a little on the load on the courts.

As to the five-year review, all you have to do is look at the cycle of technology. We're innovating at a record speed. If we're innovating at a record speed, shouldn't our law move at the same speed, or at least try? We were playing catch-up in 2012. We were playing a huge catch-up trying to fix things that we may have identified 10 or 15 years before that. We were trying to ratify treaties that existed in the late 1990s. That's a problem.

Five years, no, that's not too soon. It's definitely not too soon.

As for the other part of your question, on the burden on the courts, clear legislation also lessens the burden on the courts. If we're able to review and refine the legislation on a more regular basis, I think that would be effective for the lawyers whom the CBA represents and for the judges who used to be lawyers, and their caseloads and the judicial burden.