Google Canada asks MPs for Copyright Board reform

OTTAWA — Alphabet Inc.’s Google wants to see the Copyright Board of Canada tariff setting process simplified, its government relations counsel told members of Parliament Thursday, but at the same time he said a legislative overhaul of the Copyright Act isn’t necessary to deal with artist remuneration. Jason Kee, counsel for Google Canada and YouTube, told MPs on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that the board is inefficient. He said they should consider streamlining its tariff setting process and ensure it’s properly resourced so it doesn’t take several years to reach a decision on rates – something that creates “challenging” levels of marketplace uncertainty. “As YouTube is a licensed service, as is Google Play Music, we actually rely on the copyright board to help set the rates when we have negotiated deals. When we have a very inefficient process, that can be very challenging for us. Finding ways to make that process more efficient would be very, very helpful,” he told the committee Thursday, a proposal he had also brought before a Senate committee in 2016. Delays and inefficiency at the Copyright Board have been a long-standing issue. Last year, the federal government suggested 13 recommendations to improve the quasi-judicial tribunal, noting the chief concern outlined in previous studies was that the board takes too long to make decisions. Kee also complained that paying royalties is not a transparent process. “YouTube pays literally billions and billions of dollars into the music industry, but once that occurs it vanishes into a fairly opaque web of licensing agreements of which we have no visibility, and all the artists may know is they’re only receiving a fraction of what was paid in.” When asked about a new proposal for a copyright tax on broadband internet subscriptions to compensate artists, he panned the idea. Kee said it would “probably present a challenge” because it would “increase costs to consumers with respect to their monthly subscriptions.” “That probably would not be well received,” he said. Last week, representatives from the Screen Composers Guild of Canada proposed to the committee it should create a new internet levy for Canadian households that surpass 15 GB of data usage per month – based on the assumption that users surpassing 15 GB means they are streaming media content. “We're experiencing minuscule copyright remuneration from plentiful media consumption and it's a woefully disproportionate remuneration,” Paul Novotny told MPs when he pitched the broadband levy. The guild’s committee submission argued their proposal could be a “first step towards stabilizing copyright remuneration because it would not be tied to globally fragmented digital advertising.”

Google Canada asks MPs for Copyright Board reform

Brief | October 4, 2018

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Google Canada asks MPs for Copyright Board reform

Brief | October 4, 2018

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