Mr. Speaker, that was remarkable. The member jumped back and forth between both groups on both sides and talked both in favour of stronger, more prohibitive copyright legislation and weaker copyright legislation in the exact same speech. It is remarkable.
When we write a copyright bill, such as Bill C-32, it is about the appropriate balance.
The member is going to get angry when I say this. She has advocated on behalf of a tax on iPods, MP3s, laptops, PDAs, and BlackBerrys. She wants to put a tax on them. She wants consumers to pay this tax into some conglomerate fund which would then trickle down to the artists. We do not want to tax consumers.
She talked about how consumer groups are upset about digital locks. It is interesting. I gather from the member's speech that she is in favour of circumvention of digital locks. These are the technological protection measures that would protect against people buying a DVD, putting it on their computer and then sending it out to the Internet.
Under her provision, she is saying that they should be able to do that. It would not pay actors and it certainly would not pay the movie companies, but she is saying that she would put a levy on iPods and so forth so that she could then give the money to music artists for people who break the digital locks on movies and then send them out to the Internet. This does not make any sense at all. The people at home have to be confused. As I talk this out, her positions are in complete contrast with one another.
Bill C-32 is about balance. It is about balancing the rights of consumers and the rights of rights holders. That is why groups across the spectrum, musicians, actors, film companies, students, schools, have come forward and said that it is a balanced bill. Is it perfect? It is pretty tough to write a perfect copyright bill by its very nature. People are going to say they would really like to have just a little bit more rights one way or the other. Consumers would like just a bit more liberty in some ways and rights holders would like to have a bit more protection in some ways. It is about balancing the two.
What people cannot do is argue both in favour of stronger copyright rules and weaker copyright rules and somehow come out with a bill at the other end.
What she has proposed in her speech just a few minutes ago would anger artists and consumers at the exact same time. The member comes from Quebec. I am sure she knows that Montreal is the number three destination for the creation of video games in the world. The position the member is arguing is contrary to those software creators. They are the ones who are asking for technological protection measures to protect the work they are doing in the video game software industry. I cannot believe she would argue that we should not have digital locks on these things.
