The cultural sector mobilizes around copyright reform

CCA Bul­letin 5/11

Feb­ru­ary 3, 2011

Just the Facts

Ear­lier today, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) par­tic­i­pated in a press con­fer­ence held on Par­lia­ment Hill in Ottawa to make pub­lic Canada’s Cul­tural Indus­tries’ joint state­ment on Bill C-32, the Copy­right Mod­ern­iza­tion Act. The state­ment is signed by 88 national and provin­cial arts ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions from all arts and cul­ture dis­ci­plines. Bill C-32 is cur­rently the object of study by a spe­cial leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee of the House of Commons.

The joint state­ment brings together an unprece­dented coali­tion of orga­ni­za­tions from the arts and cul­ture indus­tries rep­re­sent­ing writ­ers, per­form­ers, actors, illus­tra­tors, musi­cians, com­posers, pub­lish­ers, poets, play­wrights, pro­duc­ers and song­writ­ers who are all urg­ing Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to make changes to Bill C-32. This coali­tion is part of a $46 bil­lion indus­try that employs more than 600,000 Cana­di­ans and that, as often stated by Her­itage Min­is­ter James Moore, con­tributes twice as much to the GDP as the forestry industry.

On Feb­ru­ary 1, the CCA appeared in front of the com­mit­tee to state its posi­tion on the bill, and over the com­ing weeks and months, more arts and cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions will have the oppor­tu­nity to explain their views. This could change if this bill fol­lows its two pre­de­ces­sors Bills 60 and 61, and dies on the order papers because of the launch of a fed­eral elec­tion. Arts orga­ni­za­tions pre­sent­ing to the com­mit­tee will press for spe­cific amend­ments to make sure that the revised Copy­right Act pro­tects artists’ and cre­ators’ exclu­sive intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights and their right to equi­table remu­ner­a­tion for the use of their works.

The CCA rec­og­nizes that parts of Bill C-32 obvi­ously respond to the needs of one par­tic­u­lar mar­ket in the cul­tural sec­tor – that of larger com­pa­nies and multi­na­tion­als — but that the same rem­edy can­not be applied to over 42% of Cana­dian artists and cre­ators who are self-employed. This is why the CCA urges Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to either amend the offend­ing arti­cles or delete them alto­gether so as to pass the part of the bill that suits the needs of some, with­out ignor­ing the real­i­ties and hurt­ing the inter­ests of so many Cana­dian artists.

The gen­eral posi­tion of the cul­tural sec­tor on Bill C-32 as it stands is that it weak­ens the core prin­ci­ples of copy­right law that have his­tor­i­cally ensured a healthy envi­ron­ment for cre­ators, pro­duc­ers, dis­trib­u­tors and con­sumers of Cana­dian cul­tural con­tent. It will com­pro­mise Canada’s com­pet­i­tive­ness in the global dig­i­tal econ­omy and under­mine the eco­nomic future of cre­ators of Cana­dian con­tent. Artists argue that the pro­posed changes in the bill reflect a lack of under­stand­ing of the struc­ture of cre­ative indus­tries in today’s rapidly evolv­ing dig­i­tal econ­omy. Par­lia­ment needs to amend the leg­is­la­tion and sal­vage C-32’s pos­i­tive pro­vi­sions. Canada’s hopes for a vibrant and inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal econ­omy are only as strong as its pro­tec­tion of intel­lec­tual prop­erty, the raw mate­r­ial of the knowl­edge econ­omy, and C-32 as it stands is a step back, rather than a step forward.

The finan­cial con­se­quences of pass­ing Bill C-32 as it now stands will amount to a loss in rev­enue for Canada’s arts and cul­ture indus­tries of at least $126 mil­lion per year. These are losses that cre­ators and their fam­i­lies can­not afford. And this fig­ure is only based on quan­tifi­able losses: lost oppor­tu­ni­ties to mon­e­tize re-use of con­tent could also have a sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive impact on the liveli­hood of creators.

At a min­i­mum, the joint state­ment sig­na­to­ries would like to see the fol­low­ing revi­sions made to Bill C-32 before it passes:

• legal­ize, with­out com­pen­sa­tion, cer­tain types of repro­duc­tions, e.g. broad­cast repro­duc­tions, pri­vate copy­ing onto dig­i­tal audio recorders;
• pro­vide for edu­ca­tion excep­tions with­out com­pen­sa­tion to the copy­right own­ers of edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als for pri­mary and sec­ondary uses of their works;
• allow the exploita­tion of works in other ways with­out per­mis­sion or com­pen­sa­tion to the cre­ator, e.g. user-generated con­tent (i.e. the YouTube or “mash up” exception).

Add the following:

• the “three-step test”, to com­ply with Canada’s inter­na­tional treaty oblig­a­tions (i.e. to qual­ify as an excep­tion or a lim­i­ta­tion to copy­right pro­tec­tion, the use of works must be lim­ited to cer­tain spe­cial cases, not con­flict with a nor­mal exploita­tion of the work, and not unrea­son­ably prej­u­dice the legit­i­mate inter­ests of the author);
• a visual artists’ resale right, to align Canada with our trade part­ners (i.e. ensure that visual artists share in the prof­its made from sub­se­quent sales of their work);
• a notice and take­down regime applic­a­ble to ISPs, to more effec­tively address online copy­right infringe­ments and piracy.

What can I do?

For more infor­ma­tion on the impacts of Bill C-32 on Cana­dian cre­ators, arts and cul­ture indus­tries and col­lec­tives, please visit www.c32jointstatement.ca to read the full statement.