Mr. Speaker, music is not free. Musical works belong to the artists, and that is why we have copyright legislation. I know that copyright is an English word that means “the right to copy”, but in French, and it is the French-language principle that I am defending, we talk about droit des auteurs or “the right of the authors”. I hope that the interpreters do not laugh at my English.
We need to remember that in any given year, about $10 million is distributed to artists. If we do not modernize the private copying system, we will no longer have a need for copyright legislation, since there will be no more authors. Music is not free. We must compensate our authors. We must pay for what we use.