TORONTO – Internet service providers got little more than a slap on the wrist Friday during a Canadian Music Week session billed as ‘ISP Liability on Trial’, where panellists debated the role of ISPs in protecting the rights of music creators and publishers in the on-line world.
Although there was a palpable feeling of frustration emanating from David Basskin, president and CEO of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA), most of Basskin’s disdain was targeted at the Federal Government which had no representation on the panel.
Collective rights management agencies such as CMRRA and SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) have been lobbying for 20 years to have the Canadian government update the Copyright Act, Basskin said. While two phases of copyright reform took place in 1988 and 1997, more is needed to address the “unaccountable, untold amounts of unauthorized use” of copyrighted material online, he said.
In Basskin’s view, the current minority government lacks the political will to undertake copyright reform, having two proposed amendments, (Bills C-60 and C-61), die before they could be passed into law, both times due to the dissolution of Parliament.
“Unfortunately at this point, we are burdened with a government that views protecting rights as being inimical to the interests of voters who are consumers,” Basskin said. “Asking the public to pay for what they use loses votes, and therefore copyright legislation is going to be pushed off to Never Never Land.”
With copyright reform seemingly not forthcoming, CMRRA and other rights management agencies have proposed that an extended collective licensing system be put in place that would levy charges for music file sharing at the ISP level.
“In an extended collective situation, you typically have one collective that represents most of the marketplace already and whose rates are set either by the board or by industry agreement,” Basskin explained.
Questions about how much the licensing fee would be and how it would be disbursed to music creators and publishers are of key concern to David Neale, Telus Mobility’s senior vice-president of strategic content services.
“If we’re talking about putting a $5 charge, the problem I have with that is I’ve yet to see how that is portioned across the rights holders,” Neale said. “And does that completely replace any other means of selling things? Does that $5 replace a subscription or other form of revenue?”
Neale said he agrees that some type of infrastructure needs to be established to enable the settlement and disbursement of money, but that all stakeholders should have a say in what that infrastructure looks like.
“You need participation, and I’d like to get people to the table, as opposed to turning up at conferences and announcing that it’s the other guy’s fault,” Neale added.
The other ISP representative on the panel, Quebecor Media’s vice-president of corporate and institutional affairs, Serge Sasseville, said it is imperative for intellectual property to be properly protected in order for the digital economy to prosper.
“So the updating of our copyright legislation is long overdue. It has to be clearly established that unauthorized file sharing is illegal,” Sasseville said. “And we need copyright legislation that will balance the rights of copyright holders with the rights of users.”
Sasseville went on to propose that revised copyright legislation should make it clear that ISPs are not liable for any copyright infringement made by subscribers on their networks.
“We’re also against the imposition of a tax on ISP revenues to finance the production of content intended for the new media,” Sasseville continued. “The imposition of such a tax would force the ISPs to divert part of their revenue to content. It’s not their role to produce nor to broadcast or distribute content.”
Similar to Neale’s suggestion, Sasseville said that ISPs should have input into any collective licensing system that requires their participation.
“We should be active participants in the definition of the new business model that would enable content producers and rights holders to monetize their creations,” Sasseville added. “We feel ISPs cannot remain insensitive to the piracy problem that threatens the survival of Canadian content producers and rights holders.”
When interviewed after the panel discussion, Telus Mobility’s Neale voiced an additional concern about a potential collective licensing system imposed on ISPs.
“The thing we have to remember, because we’re now basically talking about many billions of transactions, the cost of measuring and billing each of those transactions must be a tiny fraction, otherwise you end up with a cost that’s greater than the value of the objects you’re counting,” Neale told Cartt.ca.
Neale said that Telus Mobility is in favour of certain initiatives, such as the OneAPI project, that enables cross-carrier billing settlements with third parties.
“My ultimate design would allow the carrier to aggregate many different stores and settle all of them”, he added. “So it wouldn’t just be the monolith of iTunes. It would be a series of different stores and settlement would be done automatically. That’s how I would like to see it done.”
