Music industry groups say amend Bill C-32—or kill it

OTTAWA—Lobbying on the Conservative government’s copyright reform legislation is intensifying as the country’s largest music industry groups now say they don’t support the bill’s passage, and that if passed as-is, it will do more harm than good. Influential music industry groups the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) said Tuesday that they don’t support the passage of Bill C-32, the government’s omnibus copyright legislation, unless it is significantly amended. Following an appearance before the legislative committee on Bill C-32 Tuesday, Graham Henderson, president of the CRIA, which primarily represents the Canadian interests of the major international sound recording companies, told The Wire Report that he does not support the passage of Bill C-32 without amendment. “No, and I think that’s what you heard from everybody in there,” Henderson said just following his appearance before the committee, with Grant Dexter, president of MapleMusic Recordings, Loreena McKennitt, president of record label Quinlan Road Ltd., musician Maia Davies, and John-Paul Ellson, chair of the Canadian Council of Music Industry Associations (CCMA). In the second half of the committee meeting, representatives for the Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec, the Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo (ADISQ) and SOCAN also said they do not support the bill as it is drafted. “The situation in the music industry is catastrophic, but this bill would do nothing but make it worse. We think it would be better to maintain the status quo than passing this bill in its current form,” Solange Drouin, vice-president and executive director of public affairs at ADISQ, told the committee. The groups’ opposition to the bill comes as a political narrative—that the legislation is “bad for creators”—appears to gaining traction. Bloc Québécois MP and heritage critic Carole Lavallée, Liberal MP and heritage critic Pablo Rodriguez, and NDP MP and digital affairs critic Charlie Angus all criticized the bill Tuesday for taking away compensation from rights holders. They point to exceptions in the bill, such as its fair dealing for education exception, its exception for user-generated content, or its digital reproduction exception for radio stations, as examples of rights being “stripped” away. “We have a situation here where there’s compensation for artists, direct compensation, being taken off the table in this bill,” Angus said at the committee Tuesday. “Why do you think this bill should be allowed to go ahead if compensation for artists under the Copyright Act is one of the things being stripped?” Access Copyright, a copyright collective representing publishers, argues that the bill would drain $126 million annually from creators—a contentious number that experts dispute. Critics such as Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, say the figure is exaggerated and that most royalties affected do not go to Canadian rights holders but to companies in the United States and other countries. Henderson said the CRIA would like to see several changes to the bill. He said CRIA supports amending: the bill’s enabling provision to better facilitate damages against large-scale distributors; its statutory damages provisions to give judges more discretion about the size of fines; the user-generated content exception to “tighten up”; and the bill’s provision for Internet service providers (ISPs) to increase their liability. Bill C-32 proposes to reduce the statutory damages provision in the Copyright Act for non-commercial infringements from a range of $100 to $20,000 to a range of $100 to $5,000. Henderson said the statutory damages provision should be left as-is in the act, but that a provision should be added to give judges the discretion to decide the size of fines for infringements made for “private purposes.” The move would allow judges to reduce damages to zero if it is appropriate, he said. “The guy you actually want is the guy with six of films.” Henderson added that Bill C-32’s notice-and-notice regime for ISP liability, which is supported by major business and technology coalition the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright (BCBC), does not go far enough. He said ISPs “should be required to implement a policy that deals with repeat infringers.” One of the most controversial parts of Bill C-32 is its strict protection for digital locks, or technological protection measures (TPMs). Critics of the provision point out that its legal protection for digital locks overrides most of the user exceptions in the bill. Henderson said a compromise approach would be to give the government the flexibility to amend the TPM provision with government-in-council regulations. SOCAN told the committee its top-ranked amendment to the bill is the inclusion of the Berne Convention’s “three-step test” to help courts interpret the limitations and exceptions to copyright. The test, according to a SOCAN brief submitted to the committee, would “ensure that such limitations or exceptions are confined to certain special cases, do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work, and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author, including the author’s right to equitable remuneration.” sdoyle@thewirereport.ca

Music industry groups say amend Bill C-32—or kill it

Broadcast | March 1, 2011

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