Mr. Speaker, that is a good question, and fitting, since I have talked both before and after question period. We are essentially talking about compensation methods because it is very difficult to track every little transaction made by a user at home who sits in front of a computer searching for a song, ideally on a legal site. Unfortunately, we all know that people are more likely to search for music on illegal peer-to-peer sharing sites. It has been mentioned many times that most artists do not want to be in a position where they have to sue the people who like their music. It is also very difficult to track all this with any accuracy.
That is why the principle of compensation was proposed. At the time, the compensation was easy to apply. It was applied to blank recording media, to which a work could be copied. Today, copies are made on portable digital players. When people tried to extend the private copying compensation system from blank CDs to the portable digital player, they wore t-shirts that read, “No iPod Tax”. They refused to add another tax. This compensation measure will have to be applied. The reality is that we have gone from copying on a CD-R to a portable player with virtual songs that, theoretically, do not exist anywhere, and to which we cannot apply royalties. Who would get the royalties when we are not always able to get an accurate record of these millions of transactions per year that can be made on the Internet?