Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for agreeing to hear me.
My name is Ysolde Gendreau, and I am a full professor at the Université de Montréal's Faculty of Law.
Since my master's studies, I have specialized in copyright law—I am the first in Canada to have completed a doctorate in this field. With few exceptions, my publications have always focused on this area of law. I am appearing here in a purely personal capacity.
I would like to read an excerpt from the discussions at the Revision Conference of the Bern Convention in Rome in 1928 on the right to broadcasting, recognized in article 11bis.
Comments on that text state:
In the first paragraph, the article... strongly confirms the author's right; in the second, it leaves it to national laws to regulate the conditions under which the right in question may be exercised, while acknowledging that, in recognition of the general public interest of the State, limitations to copyright may be put in force; however it is understood that a country shall only make use of the possibility of introducing such limitations where their necessity has been established by the experience of that country itself; such limitations shall not in any case lessen the moral right of the author; nor shall they affect the author’s right to equitable remuneration, which shall be fixed, failing agreement, by the competent authorities.
The principle of the 1928 article remains today.
Were the economic players who benefited from the broadcasting of works, that is, the broadcasters, and who had liability imposed on them at the time happy with it? Of course not. Today, the economic players who benefit from the distribution of works on the Internet continue to resist the imposition of copyright liability.
We don't have to wait 90 years to reach the consensus that exists in the broadcasting world. Just 20 years later, in 1948, no one batted an eyelid to see broadcasters pay for the works they use. In the future, the resistance of today's digital communications industry will be considered just as senseless as that of broadcasters 90 years ago if we act.
I would now like to turn your attention to enforcement issues with respect to the Internet. Because it is tied to the right to communicate, the making available right has become part of the general regime that governs this right to communicate. Additional provisions have, however, generated antinomies that sap the new right of the very consequences of its recognition. Here are examples, which I do not expect you to read as I refer to them, but that I am showing to you now because I'll refer to them generally later on.
The general ISP liability requires the actual infringement of a work in order to engage the liability of a service provider. This condition is reinforced by a provision on statutory damages. The hosting provision also requires an actual infringement of a work, this time recognized by a court decision in order to engage the liability of a hosting provider. Our famous UGC exception is very much premised on the use of a single work or very few works by a single individual for whom the copyright owner will be claiming that the exception does not apply. Within the statutory damages provisions, several subsections seriously limit the interest of a copyright owner to avail himself of this mechanism. One of them even impacts other copyright owners who would have a similar right of action. Of course, our notice and notice provisions are again premised on the issuance of a notice to a single infringer by one copyright owner.
The functional objectives of these provisions are completely at odds with the actual environment in which they are meant to operate. Faced with mass uses of works, collective management started in the 19th century precisely because winning a case against a single user was perceived as a coup d'épée dans l'eau. The Internet corresponds to a much wider phenomenon of mass use, yet our Copyright Act has retreated to the individual enforcement model. This statutory approach is totally illogical and severely undermines the credibility of any copyright policy aimed at the Internet phenomenon.
As you may have seen, the texts I refer to are fairly wordy, and many are based on conditions that are stacked against copyright owners. Just imagine how long it may take to get a judgment before using section 31.1, or how difficult it is for a copyright owner to claim that the dissemination of a new work actually has “a substantial adverse effect, financial or otherwise, on the exploitation or potential exploitation” of the work”. These provisions rely on unrealistic conditions that can only lead to abuses by their beneficiaries.
The direction that our Copyright Act has taken in 2012 goes against the very object that it was supposed to harness. The response to mass uses can only be mass management—that is, collective management—in a manner that must match the breadth of the phenomenon. The demise of the private copying regime in the 2012 amendments, by the deliberate decision not to modernize it, was in line with this misguided approach of individual enforcement of copyright on the Internet.
Given the time available, I'm not able to raise the points that should logically accompany these comments, but you may want to use the period for questions to get more details. I would be pleased to provide you with that information.
Thank you for your attention.