Friday, February 18, 2011

BILL C-32

The proposed “modernization” to copyright in Bill C-32 threatens to take away the rights of creators. I will give one example to illustrate how this would happen were this Bill passed into law.

As it now stands, revenues are collected through Access Copyright for photocopying services and paid to writers. The problem is that Bill C-32 would expand the current purposes of the broad exemption of “fair dealing” to include “education.” This would allow educational institutions to photocopy any books without compensations to writers. You might think that’s good because it saves money for students. But I ask, why should writers do their work without being paid? We don’t expect that of teachers, nor do we expect that of people in any other professions. So why should writers work without being paid for writing?

Consider this: 600,000 Canadians work as writers, artists, performers, composers, songwriters and producers. Our sector contributes more than $46 bn to Canada’s GDP, more than twice the value of Canada’s forest industry.

And yet, Bill C-32, instead of protecting our rights, as copyright has done for centuries, under the pretext of “modernization” Bill C-32 threatens to take rights away, making our future, and the future of Canada’s digital economy more precarious.

I suggest that you contact your Member of Parliament to ask him or her to work to have this badly written law fixed.