Bill C-11 committee  I touched a little bit on that in my presentation, saying that there are things in the public realm under crown copyright that are outside or past the digital divide, if we want to call it that. There are countries, such as the U.K., that have massive digitization projects. Australia is doing that sort of thing.

Bill C-11 committee  Right.

Bill C-11 committee  Absolutely. I think the TPMs provide an opportunity for the library community to be able to negotiate how they want to use their materials. On the other hand, we have to remember that we're kind of used to using print materials. We've been so pampered by print. You can take a book home and, as I said, make 400 copies of the latest best seller and set up a little booth on the street.

Bill C-11 committee  I do, yes.

Bill C-11 committee  Right.

Bill C-11 committee  I'll talk to you about this from an academic law school library perspective, because that's what I'm most familiar with. Currently, we subscribe to Canadian e-books called Essentials of Canadian Law from Irwin Law Inc. We buy the print books and put them out on the reserved shelves, and we also have the e-books.

Bill C-11 committee  Yes.

Bill C-11 committee  Correct.

Bill C-11 committee  A non-infringing purpose, yes. We wouldn't necessarily support an infringing purpose. I'm not sure what the question really is.

Bill C-11 committee  It goes back to our relationship with our publishers, if our publisher would allow a licence to do that sort of thing. The lock is there for a reason. We have to know what the contract obligation is for that lock and if that contract obligation is not something that we can live with, then certainly we wouldn't do it.

Bill C-11 committee  Again, going back to the whole notion of fair dealing, and certainly there was a consideration of that being tested in a commercial situation, I don't think we're arguing that this particular test needs to be dropped. Quite honestly, we're not in the business of putting our publishers out of business.

Bill C-11 committee  On the public library level, to make it understandable for everyone from kindergarten to grade 12, and that sort of thing, you can borrow a book from the public library by downloading it to your BlackBerry—and then it's gone; you sort of borrow it for a period of time. Technically, there are people who know how to get around a lot of these things, and that's where the issue of digital locks comes into play.

Bill C-11 committee  It's virtually impossible to regulate that one. We would need to have people trying to figure...or we would have to try to impose digital locks ourselves. I don't think libraries can possibly be doing that kind of thing. You can't follow a book out of a door and say you can only have it for five days.

Bill C-11 committee  I totally agree that the wording on that is very vague. In fact it's quite disturbing, because we've never had to take that kind of extreme measure before. We've always taken measures to make sure that users are aware of copyright and cannot abuse the system. For example, we've put up signs around photocopiers saying they must be aware there's a certain obligation on the part of the user.

Bill C-11 committee  It's our position that copyright is a good thing. We need to see copyright, because it needs to be a way to regulate the market, and we understand the commercial interests involved. However, we have to also recognize that libraries fulfill a specific function in the world. People and parliamentarians talking to each other will share documents.