CCA BULLETIN / BULLETIN DE LA CCA
IT AIN'T OVER ... - DON'T DOWNLOAD THE FAT LADY'S SONG YET
Ottawa , April 1, 2004 - Yesterday's ruling by the Federal Court on the legality of downloading music from the Internet has thrown the sector into a quandary. It all came down to a definition of “distribution” and the judge decided that parking one's musical preferences on a file-sharing site does not constitute actively distributing the material.
Canadian copyright legislation used to be a few years behind practice. Now, practise is so many light years ahead of legislation that it is almost not worth the government's time to try to catch up. No sooner is an amendment a glimmer in a bureaucrat's mind, than it is out of date, overtaken by technology.
Where does this leave the cultural sector? On one side, more and more people - an entire generation and more - now consider it “normal” to download music from the Internet, with no regard to copyright. On the other, artists must have the right to receive copyright income from their material, unless they waive that right themselves. Levies are currently in place on various forms of recordable media and there are now music sites where one can pay a fee per download; the proceeds from both go to artists. Is that enough? What more can be done to ensure artists receive their just compensation for their work, and that the recording industry is able to continue to represent and support those artists who wish their services?
A further copyright-related issue is also in the news: the “Lucy Maud Montgomery provision*” which had initially been tucked away in Bill C-36 (C-8 under the Martin government), the Library and Archives Act . (This Bill is intended to join the National Library and the National Archives into a single agency.) The copyright provision in C-36 was very specific: to increase the number of years of copyright for unpublished works whose authors died between January 1, 1930 and January 1, 1949 . Apparently, this clause was slipped into Bill C-36 to correct an error contained in the 1997 changes to the Copyright Act, an error which would have penalised the estate holders of the Montgomery estate, among others. However, when former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, prorogued Parliament last Fall, the clause came up against its “best before” date of December 31, 2003 , and has now been dropped from the new Bill. Will it reappear under a different guise?
Copyright is an extremely complicated issue, one best left to legal experts and specialists in the field. CCA will be working closely with the Creators' Rights Alliance (CRA) in future to address some of these issues for our members.
*so-called because it specifically encompasses Ms Montgomery's demise in 1942 and would thus benefit the holders of the Montgomery estate.
For more information:
Kevin Desjardins
Communications and Public Relations Manager
(613) 238 3561 ext.11
Fax (613) 238 4849
17/04
Please post and/or distribute. When reprinting CCA Bulletins, please give appropriate credit.