Mr. Speaker, no one can deny that Steve Jobs was an innovative thinker in the world of business. He gave innovation and business sophistication a face. He became an icon of the new economy. We have lost him but the innovations of his company, namely the universal digital machine, the personal computer, which members on both sides of the House depend upon for their daily work, remains with us. I doubt any member would argue that deep changes occurred in our society through the introduction of the personal computer in our daily lives.
My first introduction to computing was through my dad. He worked for a company called Control Data as a truck driver and he delivered the cardboard cards that kept the information on the federal government's computers in Ottawa. I used to draw on the backs of the cards that were thrown away, so maybe it was one of the first mash-ups or culture jamming that I did.
Then my dad brought home a tape recorder. We recorded our own stories on it and taped over bits that we did not like. It provided hours of humour listening to our own squeaky voices. Then we realized that maybe we could record stuff we heard on the radio and we listened to songs instead of waiting for them to come on the radio. We could sing to those songs and record at the same time. Our minds were thinking of all the possibilities that we could do with the technology that was put before us.
Around the same time that we were doing these goofy things, Mr. Jobs brought his Apple computers to the world. There was also at this time a lawsuit going on that my hon. colleague mentioned and it was the Betamax case.
We were not early adopters in my family so we did not have a VCR when it first came out. Apparently when the Betamax came out in 1976, the television industry was up in arms. When the VCR came out there were no video stores, no rentals, nothing, so, all we could really do with a VCR was record television shows. In effect it became the first time shifting device. Instead of sitting down when broadcasters dictated, we could choose our own time to watch things; that is, if we could program the device, which many people had difficulty doing, so it became the task of members of my generation to do it because our elders could not figure out how to do it.
Television broadcasters did not like this additional consumer control because they did not want consumers to have control. Their greatest fear was the loss of revenue due to people fast forwarding commercials and watching movies and television shows from their personal libraries instead of tuning in to the broadcaster's schedule. The VCR dictated the time that people could watch shows.
The theory of copyright laws is that they limit control over the use of content to the copyright owner. They leverage the right of copyright into revenue. People cannot use what the copyright owner owns unless they pay. The theory is that revenue creates incentive for the creation of new works.
Broadcasters were worried about their revenue. Movie studios were incensed that consumers could record their movies. The sky would fall they said. They did not want VCR technology. They wanted a ban on it, so they filed a lawsuit against Sony, the maker of the Betamax. The studios wanted control over the design of the VCR. TV broadcasters and movie studios wanted certain recording features on the machine, like the recording button or the fast forward button, eliminated. I ask hon. members to imagine the VCR without a fast forward button or a record button, or let us consider for a second a world where the VCR was banned, which was the original intent of this lawsuit.
The reason why I mention all of this is because technology has evolved. People have to be active in the programming of their family lives. We need a more active population, a wider field of choice and possibilities. They have to have the idea that anything is possible because that is the foundation of innovation. I should remind members that innovation is precisely one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest weaknesses in our Canadian economy right now.
Thankfully, in 1983 the U.S. supreme court decided that the VCR was a legal device. Years later the movie industry hailed the VCR as something great. The industry received huge profits from the sale of videos. The industry that had previously feared and misunderstood the VCR realized that it could get money from this new machine. It wanted to lock the march of progress at that time but realized that the VCR provided a monetized stream for it and it was no longer fearful of it.
When I was 20, I managed to get my hands on a video camera. I taped some of my surroundings, took my favourite REM CD, clipped some stuff from the TV, and put them all together using the VCR. It was not very good, admittedly. It was kind of clunky. However I had created something new, something that allowed my interpretation of the music. That action was something that has gone on for ages.
Troubadours in medieval times would take words of songs and change them. Tellers of oral tales would change elements of the story to suit their local cultures. In our times we have groups like Negativland and DJ Danger Mouse, amongst others that do essentially the same thing.
This legislation would try to make this activity illegal. Unlocking the digital lock, something that a young Norwegian did to DVD encryption in the last decade would become a crime.
The 1998 law that the U.S.A. brought in, the DMCA, was found to be unenforceable. Basically this could not be enforced. It is too hard.
The greater problem here is that we have a digital age and a universal digital machine. All the information that we have nowadays, music, movies, text, is all in digital form now. When it is brought into a digital machine, it all gets translated into the same form of information. There is an innovation that happens there when people interact with that.
All the information is digital, so to be truly effective, to protect the copyright owner as this bill tries to do, one would effectively have to control computers. It is this idea that the U.S. tried to do. It tried to develop this idea of the Fritz chip. Every digital device would have this chip that would lock certain activities on that device. However, computer scientists have said this is impossible, that they would not be able to invent something like that.
Basically, a universal machine, a personal computer, would have to be turned into a somewhat limited machine. The effect of that, of course, would be to limit the innovation that we use these machines for.
There are also questions in legal circles about the provisions in this legislation that say that perhaps these are not measures that would fall under a copyright act, they would fall under ideas of property or civil rights, which are a provincial jurisdiction.
To finish off my discourse, I would like to state 12 reasons why our copyright laws are already strong enough and do not require any renewing to protect the copyright owners.
Number one, Canada has about 36 copyright collectives, many of which have received substantial direct and indirect government subsidies. The U.S. has only about half a dozen with no government support. The U.S. is asking us to impose this legislation, and yet we already have stronger copyright legislation than the U.S. does.
Number two, Canada has a full-time Copyright Board which has normally had four full-time members plus a sitting or retired judge as chairman, currently about a dozen full-time professional and administrative staff. The board has enormous policy and effective law-making powers. No other country of which we are aware comes close to having such a large, permanent, powerful and full-time copyright tribunal.
Number three, broadcasters pay far more for copyright loyalties than their counterparts in the U.S., much of it for rights that do not even exist in the U.S., for example, the ephemeral right. The U.S. provides an outright exemption in 17 U.S.C.112 for the ephemeral right.
About $50 million a year more, over and above, is being demanded by a collective dominated by the American dominated record labels for this right, in addition to amounts now collected by composers, authors and publishers. Canada's Copyright Board heard a major case on commercial radio where this and other issues will be decided in December 2008 and January 2009. However, it will probably be at least 18 months to 2 years after the hearing before a decision is announced, based on the timing of some recent major decisions from the board.
Number four, the Canadian Copyright Board values each right under the Copyright Act brought before it separately with little regard to layering and multiplicity of the tariffs which result in effect for the same transaction. Whether this is an error in approach by the board and/or in policy and/or in legislative drafting is subject to fair debate. The fact is that the U.S. law goes to great lengths to avoid such a result as recent court decisions have confirmed.
Number five, educators pay far more for copyright clearance than their American counterparts pay. There is simply no mechanism in place in the U.S.A. analogous to the excessive $5.16 per K-12 student or the excessive per student and course pack rates payable to access copyright for post-secondary students. There is a similar mechanism for Quebec. Canada's Copyright Board has pushed back on what it considers to be fair dealing in the classroom for what the Supreme Court of Canada arguably requires and American law clearly permits. The Copyright Board's controversial decision is currently under judicial review.
Number six, Access Copyright is trying to collect $24 a year for each full-time employee in Canadian provincial and territorial governments, not including Quebec. This potentially would be a cost of $6.5 million a year for Canadian taxpayers, which seems absurd in view of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, since most, if not all, copying of protected material would likely be for research purposes. Nonetheless, a very expensive proceeding would slowly unfold before the Copyright Board and probably beyond into the courts. Even with an unusual push by the Copyright Board to get this moving, it would likely drag on for years.
Such a tariff or equivalent mechanism would never get off the ground in the U.S.A. for many reasons, including that state sovereign immunity is well established by the U.S. Supreme Court. There may very well be provincial crown immunity in Canada but to what extent it would be invoked is currently unclear. At any rate, this new attempted tariff by Access Copyright has no counterpart in the U.S. and is yet another situation in which U.S. copyright owners could prove to be better off in Canada than in their own country.
Number seven, Canadian law requires payment for certain educational uses that are explicitly exempted in the U.S.A., such as the performance of films in a classroom.
Number eight, Canada has no explicit statutory exception for the performance of music for the purpose of selling sound recordings or audiovisual equipment as is found in section 110(7) of the U.S. copyright law.
Number nine, Canadians pay large amounts to SOCAN and NRCC for performances in countless bars, restaurants, retail stores and other small business establishments. The U.S. notoriously exempts these establishments, contrary to a WTO section 110 ruling which the U.S. continues to flout. The U.S. is by far the leading adjudicated current violator of international copyright law.
I could cite more examples which I found online in a blog. I have shared the author's thoughts with the House on why our copyright laws are already stronger than those of the U.S. and yet we are getting pressure from multinationals to impose this law on Canadians when our law is already sufficiently strong.
With that I will conclude.