Bill C-11 committee  Good afternoon, and thank you very much for the opportunity to address you today on what my industry considers to be the most important bill to go before government. As mentioned, my name is Stuart Johnston, and I'm the president of the Canadian Independent Music Association. J

Bill C-11 committee  Quite frankly, that's a difficult question to answer. It's hard for me to put myself into the shoes of any individual Canadian. What we are seeing, though, are the enablers out there who are making it possible for people to download music illegally. I'm talking about the isoHunts

Bill C-11 committee  Certainly. I'd like to pass that over to Bob, since he's in the trenches and he can answer it directly.

Bill C-11 committee  Quite frankly, we'd rather see no limit on statutory damages. But in the spirit of the act, we have not talked about a specific ceiling as an association. We were hoping to engage in more discussions on that with folks on your side of the table to talk about what is an appropriat

Bill C-11 committee  Part of the language is so broad in the act that we really don't know what the definition of “individual” is versus “commercial” or “non-commercial”. That's part of the reason we approached this in the way we did: because we find that the definitions in the act are not specific e

Bill C-11 committee  Well, what we're saying is that if we have a clause in there that does permit the use of parody and satire, first, there is no definition of that. Where are the boundaries? What do we really mean by parody and satire? And I think my—

Bill C-11 committee  That's actually our point, so we—

Bill C-11 committee  We're not suggesting that it should be outlawed. My friend was talking about the moral rights.

Bill C-11 committee  If this legislation enshrines stronger moral rights, and then at the same time says that you're allowed to do parody and satire, that flies in the face of moral rights. I'll tell you exactly how—

Bill C-11 committee  Well, I would take a step back and look at the principle of the matter. Who owns that material? It's the right of the copyright owner to say “Yes, you may use my song” or “No, you cannot”. I'll give you an example of how it works perfectly. On Sunday night at the Oscars, Billy

Bill C-11 committee  When it comes to “notice-and-notice”, I think by and large it would probably work in many cases. People keep bringing YouTube into the argument. YouTube would absolutely respect a notice-and-notice. They have proven they would do it. They are good business partners. We're not tal

Bill C-11 committee  Thank you.

Bill C-11 committee  The structure of the current law allows those BitTorrent sites—at least that's what they are claiming—to get away with posting copyrighted material without the fear of strong litigation or fines against them. The fact that isoHunt has just said in their defence claim in response

Bill C-11 committee  There is the attempt at tools. We believe those tools will enable isoHunts to get away with impunity and will force Bob to take them to court. And they know that Bob's not going to do it. He's a small-business guy. He does not have the means to do that every single time. So I thi

Bill C-11 committee  That is the intent, yes.