Today is music day at the Bill C-32 committee as there will be two panels focused on music copyright issues. The first panel is the Balanced Copyright For Canada panel, comprised of CRIA (which backs the site as part of its strategy to “radicalize and activate” its base through social media as Graham Henderson described it earlier this month) and four of the site’s board members. The second panel includes SOCAN, ADISQ, GMMQ, and the SAC. 

The BCFC panel should raise some interesting questions about what CRIA says publicly at committee or does in the courts and what it says behind closed doors. I recently obtained a document under the Access to Information Act summarizing comments made by Henderson to Industry Canada officials in a September 2010 meeting, several months after Bill C-32 was introduced. The meeting was a Chamber of Commerce event, so CRIA did not report it in its lobbying disclosures. The summary includes two notable positions that seem to contradict public action or words and suggest a split between CRIA and other creator groups, including the Canadian Independent Music Association.

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