Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Motion No. 431 put forward by my colleague from Kootenay--Columbia. The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should draft legislation deleting sections 30.8(8) and 30.9(6) of the Copyright Act.
My interest is always piqued when business of the House affects copyright. As I have said before, I am someone who has had the joy of receiving a royalty payment and I also believe I am the only member of the House who has made a living writing plays, so when Motion No. 431 came across my desk, I was interested.
Having read the motion many times, I could not understand what the motion intended to do. No offence is meant to my colleague, but I try to frame my writing so as to be understandable in at least one of the official languages. The way the motion is written, it is hard to know what it says.
Was it a motion that condemned proposed increases in the copyright levy on blank recordable material? I am opposed to the size of the proposed increases because I believe the amount is excessive and may erode public support for the all important copyright payments to creators. No, if that were the case it would read something like “That, in the opinion of this House, the proposed increase in the copyright tariff currently before the Copyright Board is excessive”. I would be happy to rise today to support that motion, but Motion No. 431 reads nothing like that.
I pulled out the Copyright Act and tried to figure out what my friend from Kootenay--Columbia was talking about. I had my assistant call the member to get a better understanding of what he meant in the motion and I thank my friend for his kind explanations.
Section 30 of the Copyright Act deals with ephemeral recordings, a phrase that basically means recordings made for later broadcast but do not go directly to broadcast. Technically it is a breach of copyright to transfer a recording from one medium to another, just as it is a breach of copyright to photocopy a book or an article from a magazine. Section 30 outlines the circumstances when these ephemeral recordings are allowed without the express permission of the copyright holder, including what records are required, how long these recordings may be kept and so on.
Subsections 30.8(8) and 30.9(6) say that when a licence is available from the collective society of the specific individual copyright holder, then the other rules of section 30 do not apply and the licence fee applied by the copyright society takes precedence.
There have recently been testimonies before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage from private radio stations on the effect of these sections. They said that the sections amount to a loophole in the law which is being used by some of the copyright collectives to charge radio stations a royalty to transfer the recording to a medium from which it can be broadcast, the ephemeral recording, and then another royalty to broadcast the recording. They complain that they are paying a royalty twice to broadcast a song once. I suggest that Motion No. 431 really means that in the opinion of this House, radio stations should only have to pay once for the use of a recording for broadcast, regardless of how many times the recording must be transferred to a different medium to prepare for the single broadcast.
The concept is something I actually endorse. New Democrats support fair taxation, not double taxation. There are a few caveats I would like to put on the record on which my support is conditional.
The first is that the basic framework of the copyright collective is a concept we should all be supporting. There are many who use these organizations as the target for every economic ill in the copyright world. I think that the biggest step forward that has been made in our copyright laws has been the establishment and support of copyright collectives. These collectives are critical for the future of Canadian creators. After all, artists have little to no support in this country. If we look at real dollar expenditures in Canada over the last decade, government support for the arts and for artists is still at a lower level than it was under Brian Mulroney.
This lack of public support has made artists rely more and more on that little copyright cheque. Remember that the vast majority of Canadian creators make less than $20,000 a year, so these collectives are important to them because they are basically poor. Poor people cannot enforce their rights in our society by themselves.
Artists are not going to get legal aid to sue the local radio station or the local kid with an MP3 player for copyright infringement. Without copyright collectives, artists would be unable to enforce their rights, collect any revenue for the use of their work, or effectively negotiate with the huge media interests that primarily use their work to make a profit.
Another part of the Copyright Act I want to be on record as supporting are the sections that allow for private copying of music with the condition that creators are compensated through a small levy on the sale of blank material. I said earlier that I opposed the size of the proposed increase to the blank medium levy, but I oppose it because I worry that a 100% increase in the levy will erode public support for the whole levy system.
Frankly, I want to comment on the fact that the government and the collectives have done an abysmal job explaining the copyright system to the public. All I hear from my constituents is that they know the price of blank CDs is increasing and they are angry about it. No one is attempting to explain to consumers that the money collected by the levy goes directly to composers and performers. No one is explaining that the reason it is legal to make these private copies in Canada is that there is a levy to offset the loss in revenue to creators from private copying.
The government and the collectives, both of whom seem to have lots of money for private jets for the Prime Minister or in the case of SOCAN for meetings in the best private clubs in town, should be spending a small amount of their administrative costs on letting the public know how our copyright system actually works.
Canadians understand that the creators need to be paid for their work. They want to pay creators and performers for their work. They are suspicious of the current system because we live in a country with a history of hidden taxes and comparatively secret and wealthy organizations that only speak through their lawyers. This past behaviour has led the public to be suspicious of the whole public sector and copyright is not immune to this suspicion. They do not need to be suspicious and if the government and the collectives put some effort into public education, then they would not be.
I thank my friend for moving the motion. I hope that this debate contributes to a stronger copyright system.