Bill C-11 committee  Mr. Chair, committee members, and Madam Clerk, my name is John Lawford, and with me is Janet Lo. We are counsel to the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, one of four major Canadian consumer groups who have banded together under the title of the Canadian Consumer Initiative, CCI. Th

Bill C-11 committee  The example that's often used is a YouTube video of your child with music playing in the background, or a slide show that you create with music in the background. If that is non-commercial and you're not making any money from it...and it's being done right now. It's within the ab

Bill C-11 committee  It might lead to more lawsuits, but more importantly, I think you'll never be able, as that mother, to take your DVD and transform it into another format for the car or whatever, because no one would ever create software that would allow you to do that. She probably, unless she's

Bill C-11 committee  I see the conceptual link, if you will, but we just don't believe there's going to be the level of private use that will cut into sales such that a levy would be necessary. What we're talking about here is people being able to make a backup so that if their kid steps on their DVD

Bill C-11 committee  No, we don't think that's the case.

Bill C-11 committee  I think there's a fairly big effort in this bill, as I said, to try to steer—for the most part—non-commercial infringement towards the capped amount. That will generally dissuade lawsuits for unreasonable amounts against non-commercial uses. There's still, as we said—because of t

Bill C-11 committee  Yes, we're content-neutral, if you will.

Bill C-11 committee  I think the bill strikes the right balance. It says “notice”. For notice, most people who come into their house and ask their kids what they were downloading, that's going to stop it right there.... The second notice, even more effective, and the third, maybe there's a hardcore g

Bill C-11 committee  Among all the groups there would be several thousand. In Quebec, l'Union des consommateurs has, I believe, 19 Fnacs, Fédération Nationale d'Achats des Cadres. The Consumers Council of Canada has several thousand members. PIAC, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, is much smaller.

Bill C-11 committee  I think I'll say the opposite and say that consumers are up against TPMs every day. They use their iTunes and they realize that they can't put it on more than five devices because that's what iTunes says they can do with it. They are very familiar with the fact that you can't cop

Bill C-11 committee  I would say that you'd find there is a subset of consumers who are younger and more Internet-savvy who have more problems with the restrictions than perhaps some of the older users.

Bill C-11 committee  Yes; I think you could have that situation with the present time and format shifting. Some of the new services that are coming in will ask you to pay for a version that lets you keep it for a specific amount of time, or you can just stream it. For DVDs, again, it's one copy, effe

Bill C-11 committee  I follow you, but for software in particular, you can make a backup right now under the Copyright Act. That was the balance that was struck at that time: you get to at least back up. You may have to get a licence for five users or three users or whatever, but at least you have th

Bill C-11 committee  We don't think there's a need for levies at all on these devices. It's innovation-braking: the market will grow if you let people use content. They will buy more of it. If it's inconvenient and they have what effectively amounts to a tax on their devices, that will retard the mar

Bill C-11 committee  Well, that type of TPM I think will come into the market whether you have the consumer rights—which we are asking for in the way that we want them to be expressed—or not. It's in the market now. It's more a factor of whether business sees a business model in Canada. We don't beli