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C-32 Legislative Committee Discussion Marked By Copyright Confusion

Today’s Bill C-32 Legislative committee hearing, which featured only two witnesses, may have marked a new low given the amount of confusion and misinformation coming from MPs and witnesses.  The panel should have delivered a good debate on C-32 and fair dealing given the presence of the Canadian Teachers Federation and Douglas Arthur Brown, a Nova Scotia writer and Second Vice-Chair of the Writers Union of Canada.  Yet rather than productive discussion and debate, the one-hour hearing featured:

  • Brown claiming that the fair dealing exception for education could result in losses of up to 85% of revenues.  When pressed on where the figure came from, Brown said Access Copyright provided it to him. When asked if he had inquired how Access Copyright had arrived at that number, Brown admitted that he hadn’t and that the onus should not be on him to do so.  For good measure, Brown stated that there was nothing in Bill C-32 for writers.  When asked to elaborate, he noted that all the exceptions should be removed, even though exceptions such as parody and satire are included in the bill and supported by virtually all creator groups.
  • The CTF, which tried to make the case that copying full books is not a common practice (it noted that the average copying per student is 60 pages per year), completely confused the committee by raising both fair dealing and the Internet exception.  During the ensuing discussion, it inaccurately claimed that freely available works on the Internet were not subject to any copyright protection.  If that sounds like it doesn’t make any sense, it is because it doesn’t.
  • Some of the MPs were not much better than the witnesses.  The most notable was Bloc MP Carole Lavallée, who expressed concern with copying portions of a play by Corneille without permission or compensation. Pierre Corneille, the founder of French tragedy, died in 1684, suggesting Ms. Lavallée is now concerned with the copyright implications of quoting from works that have been in the public domain for 275 years.

The committee’s final hearing of 2010 is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

18 Comments

  1. Speculation is that we’ll probably end up proroguing again anyway sometime after this session. I have a feeling this facade wouldn’t be allowed to continue much longer in the first place due to the political situation and election speculation within a few months. Hopefully the 34,400,000 Canadian consumers and voters that work outside the culture sector will be better represented if we end up shutting down for a widely speculated election call in Feb.

  2. “When pressed on where the figure came from, Brown said Access Copyright provided it to him. When asked if he had inquired how Access Copyright had arrived at that number, Brown admitted that he hadn’t and that the onus should not be on him to do so.”
    It is an undisputable fact that Brown is a traitor.
    What do you mean how do I know? Well, it’s an undisputable fact.. Ok fine Sam told me. I don’t know how Sam knows, it’s not my responsibility I’m not Sam’s mother. I just state the facts like the fact that Brown is a traitor. The hows and why’s are not my concern.


  3. @Michael: “Pierre Corneille, the founder of French tragedy, died in 1684, suggesting Ms. Lavallée is now concerned with the copyright implications of quoting from works that have been in the public domain for 275 years.”

    Michael, aren’t you a little bit confused too 🙂 As when Pierre published his works, there were no “copyright” laws in France. His works weren’t either “public domain” nor “copyrighted” as the terms were not coined yet. His works just were.

    See this interesting history, where Pierre is mentioned too:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_copyright_law

    Also don’t skip easily on this paragraph: “Through this system of royal privileges, the King granted monopolies to specific editors, and implemented a system of censorship.”

    So here comes Mr. Moore and tells us that C-32 is not a relic of ancient “royal privileges”, but a modern, progressive law that will bring Canada in the “digital age”. Bwahahahaha.

    BTW 1684+275=1959. What does it mean.

    Nap.

  4. Thanks for the update
    Thanks for this update, Michael, and for live-tweeting during the session. I was watching CPAC’s Public Safety Committee coverage at the same time (I actually went there looking for the copyright committee, but stumbled onto that session and stayed, because it looked interesting). Thanks for keeping us informed!

  5. Dimwits need not apply …
    Is it not time to recruit proper INFORMED and rational representatives needed to chart our digital economy as a nation? I’m fairly certain most politicians would not qualify, as well as an unsettling number of industry and academic ‘professionals’. Copyright is just one linchpin of our digital future, also infrastructure, access, consumers rights, business concerns, regulation (or non), training, innovation, investment and legislation.

    Unless we look at this in a comprehensive manner it’s just going to break at the weakest point. So my question is why are we locking into copyright legislation now before the digital economy plan is hardly in the planning stages?

    Oh, and as a footnote. It’s never necessary to check figures from industry representative groups, just look at the echelon of reliability and accurateness … the RIAA.

  6. Maybe Corneille is a member of Access Copyright. We must protect our creators!

  7. How dare he have to back up his assumption with facts in from of a committee? Of I’m sure the answer is on the Internet somewhere, but you think you’d actually be prepared to back up your figures when you go into a meeting like this. With that, it’s worth nothing more than the air used to speak it (ie. nothing).

    Of course, I’m sure there are on the committee who believe the value without anything to back it up.

  8. This bill will die in committee, and to quote Martha Stewart – that’s a good thing.

  9. Andrew Butash says:

    I’m scared for our future. Hold me…

  10. Clinton Blackmore says:

    How are we expected to abide by laws that even our lawmakers and their advisors do not understand?

  11. That does sound confusing.

    If only Canada could create some sort of position, like a research chair or something, to which we could appoint someone, a law professor, say, who would do everything in her power to bring unbiased information to the discussion.

    If only.

  12. Or say, the officer of a major arts council …?

  13. Or people could be expected to actually back up the information they present to a committee? I mean, unless of course the 85% loss is only an opinion with no basis and not something that someone is trying to pass off as fact.

    And to be honest, no I haven’t gone looking because I really don’t care enough. I would just expect people who actually want to shape the law in a particular way to care enough to actually present complete information with things to back it up rather than just looking like they have no idea what they are talking about at all (which is what that comes off as).

  14. Crockett,

    That would be great if my job involved informing and influencing federal policy and presenting unbiased research on copyright. Then someone would actually be doing that.

    Alas, that is not my job. The work I do on copyright is voluntary.

  15. If you want your opinion to be ignored, in my opinion, the best way to do so is not be able to back up your opinion with anything other than X told me so, and no I didn’t want to ask them how they came up with it.

  16. John, if you can show me an unbiased person I will show you a bridge for sale.

  17. @Degen,

    So by “unbiased,” you mean simply parroting information supplied by a potentially affected proponent of this legislation without asking for scientifically defensible documentation in which that information has been attained, not addressing the potential misinterpretation of the proposed legislation by those without training in intrepreting law or without access to (or not bothering to check) the actual documentation in question, and approaching the situation with focus as to the merits of commerce without any regard to the affect on the common public.

    If only.

  18. wow
    Way to go Napalm, i think MG was put in his place. Knowing french and understanding french are two very different things. I find that it was a very appropriate concern raised.

    Shame on you Mike for missing the point.