If ACTRA must publicly represent groups like the CPCC and the Creators’ Coalition during its allotted lobbying time on Parliament Hill, here are 3 suggestions for new talking points on Copyright and “levy” issues. As previously stated, I don’t begrudge artists the right to shake the money tree or belly up to the trough, so here are a few possible options that could be pursued, instead getting tied up in the “iPod tax” debate. (That said: if you’re going to spend a lot of time trying to argue with politicians, it seems reasonable that they will do whatever they can to distort your objective. That is, after all, what politicians do).
1. Extend Section 19 of the Copyright Act instead of Section 80.
This idea comes via Russell McOrmond. (Twitter feed & blog). He suggests that, “Section 19 is a compulsory license applied to neighbouring rights holders (performers and makers of sound recordings) that applies to communication to the public by telecommunications (radio). I believe this compulsory regime should be expanded to include non-commercial distribution, and not just commercial radio. This regime doesn’t apply to composers, who license their music in appropriate ways.”
2. Explore a Private Lending Right type of mechanism.
Again, this is an idea that McOrmond has suggested as an alternative to the Private Copying Levy. “The Public Lending Right (PLR) Commission distributes annual payments to Canadian authors for the presence of their books in Canadian public libraries.”- from the PLR’s website.
It’s an interesting idea especially when you put the words “lending” and file “sharing” together. I do believe that the sharing of files far and wide, unencumbered with digital locks will expand our fan bases and not diminish a fan’s desire to pay for content at some point. If a person “illegally downloads” a song it does not become implicit that they would have paid for it otherwise, thereby “robbing” the creator of income. It is also possible that a so-called “thief” could have paid for the very same content at some point in the past, perhaps in different formats as well (i.e. 8-track, cassette, vinyl, CD, VHS, BETA, Laserdisc…).
Ultimately, I can’t see the government/business lobby taking either of McOrmond’s suggestions (as valuable as I think that they would be to explore), because it would legitimize the act of downloading and as I’ve been saying, there’s bigger money in litigation.
3. Redirect any levies or “taxes” to programs such as FACTOR, Canada Council etc.
Maybe it would be more palatable for those opposed to a “tax” if they looked at the extra money as a real investment in new and developing talent as opposed to established artists looking for another form of remuneration based on a hypothetical. Instead of pitching a levy (which gets spun as a “tax”), pitch an investment that is a real investment. i.e. – “buy this iPod and $75 will go to the FACTOR Demo Award Program” or something like that.
I can hear a dozen James Moore’s chirping a million reasons why none of the above should happen. I think I’ll go turn the guitar on to drown out the sound of his voice…
In the meantime, watch this clip of the brilliant Canadian Cabaret singer Sharon Matthews. I hope the new copyright laws that her unions are lobbying for won’t impede the growing success of her show.
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My Gmail stuck the alert for this into Spam, so I only noticed this now.
Some clarity on my PLR-based proposal. This would be an outside of copyright compensation for private activities only. It needs to be kept as far away from copyright as possible if it is to be successful and not backfire. This is exactly the concern you expressed.
As to money in litigation — maybe for intermediaries like labels and collectives, but not likely for creators. That’s a conversation for another time.
We have a disconnect between those of us in the Copyright bubble and those in the general public. The general public believes that private activities (time, device, format shifting, backups, etc) are not covered by copyright in any way. They believe that once they have paid for content, they can do whatever they want to it in the privacy of their home and on all the devices which they own. They believe this is the case in the USA, and they believe the (false) claims that Canadian law is somehow “weaker” than US law. They aren’t going to willingly pay for those private copies, and any attempt to force payment under copyright will backfire and induce people to infringe in public ways. These purely private activities must be carved out of copyright to match the expectations of the general public.
Most people outside of the copyright and/or publishing/author bubble are entirely unaware of the PLR. The money comes out of general government revenue, and outside of people like me never comes up in copyright debates (the CopyFight?). As such, political opposition will be minimal if at all — the further away from copyright this compensation scheme is seen, the more likely it will be sustainable.
Public activities, whether commercial or not, should still be handled within Copyright. This is why the section 19 expansion to P2P proposal. Non-commercial P2P filesharing is much closer to non-commercial radio than it is lending by a library. While there is a minority who consider it free promotion of music, I believe most Canadians believe it should be a Copyright compensated act just as radio is.
Like radio in the past, opposition from neighbouring rights holders to the very existance of this type of activity is a critical problem. This is why the compulsory licensing — to remove the ability of neighbouring rights holders to refuse licensing, at least in the short term. Composers were under a compulsory regime in the past for radio, but that was removed when it was clear composers were willing to license.
Hope this helps. I too am not counting on parliamentarians to adopt these types of proposals, although I am now curious how close the Liberal amendments will turn out to be. Maybe they were listening to us — I can dream anyway