Archived - Robb, Peter

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am presently the Field Sales Force Manager for Penguin Group Canada and I have worked for over thirty years within the Canadian Book Industry. I am very concerned that Canada's Copyright Act will become less effective in protecting Canadian Authors and those who strive to publish their work in Canada. My company's success and that of the Canadian Authors we are honoured to publish depends upon the sale of the books we produce. Our revenues depend on book sales as well as on fees from the reproduction of our products under collective licences. This income pays royalties and advances to authors, salaries to our employees, rent, overheads and inputs, and provides our business with the means to take risks and make investments as a producer of Canadian content.

Copyright should exist to protect producers and authors and to provide them with incentives to contribute to Canada's rich body of original content. Copyright law should ensure that the people who worked so hard to produce works are compensated when others use them.

Collective licences exist to allow universities, schools, corporations and governments to make copies of works while ensuring fair and appropriate compensation. This is a system that works well, but it is imperiled.

I am worried that new exceptions and expanded fair dealing could significantly undermine Canadain authors and those involved in publishing their work. Furthermore this could damage the market for books, magazines and newspapers published in Canada.

I want Copyright Act reforms to follow these principles as outlined by the government for Bill C-61 which died on the Order Paper at the time of the last election:

• The rights of those who hold copyright must be fairly balanced with the needs of users to access copyright works.
• The Copyright Act must provide clear, predictable and fair rules to allow Canadians to derive benefits from their creations.
• The Copyright Act should foster innovation in an effort to attract investment and high-paying jobs to Canada.
• Canada must ensure that its copyright framework for the Internet is in line with international standards.

Canada's Copyright Act needs to be reformed because:

• New digital technologies have made it cheap and easy for anyone to copy files and make money from them, or to copy and distribute works without recognizing the need to get paid for these uses of those works.
• By failing to take action, our government has allowed a culture that reduces intellectual property's ability to flourish. The climate for intellectual property has been spoiled. This is a culture that assumes copyright works can be expropriated without proper compensation for those who invested their talents, skills, time and hard work to create them.
• Canada's Copyright Act is badly outdated. We are years behind our key trading partners in modernizing our copyright laws for the digital age. Canadian copyright law should recognize international standards by implementing and ratifying the WIPO, WCT and WPPT Treaties. We need to feel secure when we trade with other nations — secure in the knowledge that our works may safely travel the Internet to places that reciprocate protections.
• We need rules to discourage the unauthorized taking of other people's property without compensation.
• It is a national responsibility to help protect publishers' and creators' investments of time, money and creativity through a modernized Copyright Act.

Thank-you for your attention to this critical issue.

Sincerely,

Peter Robb
Ottawa,
Ontario