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Results: 1 - 15 of 369
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-29 10:33
We've been listening to some very interesting positions today, but I keep coming back to a refrain that is central to us here. How is it that we are going to be able to sustain creativity, and we're going to have people creating and people publishing five years down the line? Obviously, it's a huge crisis at the present time.
I hear Mr. Morrison of the Canada Law Book talk about the issue of a Canadian publishing company. That's what you are. You are coming up against multinational publishers.
We heard yesterday about the impact of the system of licensing in the United States, which has in fact shrunk the number of producers incredibly so that there are now far fewer people in the market. So we are not in the business of reducing knowledge and reducing authors and creators. That is just everything this committee is against and that any kind of cultural policy should be against.
I hear from someone such as you, as a publisher of law books, I hear from Ms. Crean and people who are in fact representing thousands of writers, and they are saying, we do not want to have our creations appropriated, and that's how it looks. It's straightforward. I hear from Mr. Larivière that in fact it's a very straightforward issue--researchers only get one article and there's really nothing much to that. It's not any kind of massive assault on copyright.
Why can we not then just go to the licensing? Would that not make it easier for these people who want this one copy? Why not put in place a licensing form that is in fact improved?
Everyone has talked about some of the problems that exist with access copy, or with blanket licensing. Extended licensing is a possibility. We've heard from Ms. Hebb on that. We in fact have a system that everybody buys into--you included, and you included too, Mr. Hill. You talk about the massive amounts of money that you put into access copy. Why not just extend that? Why not extend it, given what you hear from all of the people who create in this country and the people in the public? It just seems to be the way to go.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-29 10:42
If you add the amount of money you have to pay to get into Statistics Canada's sites, and so on, research is expensive. As a periodical writer, you maybe dedicate two weeks or a month to writing a paper. I want to follow the money here. How does it work?
In fact, you do the work and you get paid something, I hope. Then, the next day, it's out there and that's the end of it. In the past, you would publish something, it would begin to move through the system, and you would continue to accumulate moneys from it. It seems to me to be the elimination of income, as we know it, for people in the publishing industry.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-28 17:07
Thank you.
I'm hoping we can get somewhere here. I'd like to extend the kind of questioning both Mr. Bonwick and Mr. Lincoln have brought up.
Are you not worried about having trouble getting course materials 10 years down the line if no one can afford to produce it? Ms. Hushion makes the point that in the United States, given the system they have in place, the number of producers has shrunk dramatically. That seems to be a case in point. I find that the idea that a collective is somehow an anti-competitive creature flies in the face of that particular fact. When we see the inability of people to actually produce material any more, because it is not worth their while economically or they can't sustain their livelihood, we do see a shrinking of content, and that's what we are very concerned about as the heritage committee, the shrinking of knowledge. Canadian content is another thing.
I guess the idea from Mr. Mutton of a centralized service would be ideal for clearing collective rights. You've said that, everybody seems to say that, but there seem to be problems with the existing collective system. Ms. Hebb has mentioned the idea of having this new extended licence. Would this ease the way, in your estimation, for some of the people who are suffering from the complexities of the system as it exists?
Further, with this business about how it's so onerous going through a collective, I don't know. If there is a playwright out there, say, who gets 100 requests in the course of a week for plays to be put on at different universities or high schools, how long does it take to get through to that person? I think that sounds like an incredibly onerous task. Would it not be a lot easier just to call up Access Copyright and say, we want to do this person's work, and have that done? I'm just questioning the idea that clearing things individually would somehow be easier. Why would it be?
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-28 17:12
So it's just a matter, really, of clearing up the glitches within the collective structure, which we're all in favour of. We would like to somehow figure out how we can make that work better.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-28 17:17
I'm concerned about this whole idea that we have the Internet and people have a right to all of the material that's on there. I think people are willing to pay--and do pay heftily, a rising amount every month--for their Internet and their web and their e-mail and all of that. Is the idea of people paying a certain amount of money for content really so far beyond the pale?
That's just a little bit of a reflection at the end of this. I think we do it all the time. I think it's also an issue of our being conscious of how it is that you sustain creation. Material does get created, but it dries up if there isn't a source of remuneration--witness Professor Weber's very eloquent example of his whole cycle through learning and teaching as a special education teacher.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-01 9:48
Thank you very much for coming here today. It's unfortunate that this very important part of the report got kind of swept off the table in the public consciousness in the last several months, because it is incredibly important.
Just thinking about the archives receiving every one of the newspapers every single day and chronicling them is astounding. You kind of have a sense that we're a ship floating along, and we're just getting heavier and heavier. Unless we make some decisions, things are just going to get thrown out here and there because there's just no more room and people don't have the system set up to figure out what to keep.
You know that this committee has done three reports over the last seven years, and I've been part of them all, I'm happy to say. We've been nudging the Department of Canadian Heritage to really work on the issues of deterioration of items at the archives and the library.
In 2000, we talked about the need to do a planning process to examine long-term space and preservation needs. In our most recent report on broadcasting, we talked about the importance of ensuring that the archival footage of Canada's broadcasters doesn't get lost, because we know that even now much of that old stuff is disappearing.
In your report, you ask what is required. What you told us we should do is eloquent, and I want to suggest at the end that we frame a letter with all of your suggestions. But you say there will be no success in this endeavour until there is a shift to a culture of heritage protection within the federal government, and cooperation among entities involved.
I would like your opinion on whether you've actually seen a shift away from heritage protection. It seems to me that at some point we were doing this a lot better than we're doing it now. Can this shift be traced to money, cutbacks, or some kind of changes in mandates? I don't believe there have been changes in mandates. If we could see where the weakening on this file started, maybe we could start thinking about how to deal with it.
I would like to suggest that this committee use some of the very specific action items that the Auditor General has suggested and craft a letter to the heritage minister asking for answers. Mr. Bonwick suggested we have the committee come before us, but it seems to me that the first step is to get them to do some work and have some answers before they come before us. Then we will be able to hear about what steps they've taken on these issues that you've raised on that last section.
Could I table that, please?
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-01 9:52
I'm waiting for an answer.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-01 10:34
Thank you.
I want to just suggest again that as a watchdog committee, we have that role of being able to look at the areas of heritage that are of concern to this committee. We have the opportunity now, with the benefit of your report, to use the recommendations of the report and bulk them up with the reports that we have made over the last years in order to put forward some very strong recommendations to the department, which I would suggest we do based on the concerns you've put forward in paragraphs 14, 15, and 16 of your document.
Then I would like to suggest that we either, as Mr. Bonwick suggested, have the heritage department, the National Library, and the National Archives come before us to discuss their action plans on these areas or send them letters and ask them to start doing some work on it in writing so we can start seeing that when we come back together.
I must say, Madam Moreau, your comments about the fact that when you looked at the document disposal organization system, you found out in fact that the archives realized they're not getting stuff from the departments. The system has broken down. So potentially we could have massive amounts of material that never do get archived--black holes in history, black holes in government records. It's very frightening.
And really, when it all comes down to it, you think about different events in history that have been revisited because there has been archival information, there have been tapes, written records. If they're not there, then we don't find out what happened, we don't learn from our mistakes, we don't know what our history is. So what you're saying is quite disturbing.
You didn't mention any particular departments. Maybe you don't know the departments. Let's shine a light on this. Let's say we have a really major breakdown here in terms of history making, record keeping in this country. I beseech this committee to take this seriously and put it forward as the new committee gets struck after this very imminent election.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-04-01 10:38
Well, I guess I would just like to see whether we have a consensus around the table that we would like to put forward the concerns that were put forward in the Auditor General's report and ask for responses from the appropriate committees.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-03-30 17:08
I'm trying to home in on what Madam Gagnon began.
I think we want to know what is the easiest method here to handle the access issues with the premise in mind that creators are compensated.
I've heard over the months that the whole idea of a blanket licence is somehow.... I want to know whether you think it's easier or more complicated, because I just heard from you, Mr. Cloutier, that people who do not expect compensation, or who expect compensation, will be compensated. That sounds complicated to me. I don't understand how it is that whether you want to be compensated or not you're going to be, and how does that all work? It sounds complex. The blanket licence sounds so easy. It seems to be easy and it serves the purposes of meeting the needs of the creators, so why wouldn't it be the best model?
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-03-30 17:09
I appreciate that. That's why I was confused when you said that whether they expect to be compensated or not, they will be. So do you search out people and compensate them whether they want to be or not? Can't they simply say they don't want it?
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-03-30 17:11
Would you say that this exemption method that you're putting forward is more complex than the blanket licensing in terms of actually implementation, and monitoring, and maintaining?
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-03-30 17:27
I'd just like to follow up on your comment, Madam Bouvet, that you want to see what the impact would be on various stakeholders. What are the financial impacts? I keep coming back to that. Let's follow the money on this issue. What are the financial implications of these two models for a school, for Margaret Atwood, or for Lucy Maud or Stuart McLean or some writer who is posting? Can we see the devastating situations that seem to be described from both sides of this? I just think that would be very helpful.
You must have done some of the math on that.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-03-25 9:49
Thank you very much for coming in today. I know that you know we're struggling with this issue, and it's one that is critical to the whole cultural protection regime we have in the country.
I just have a couple of sort of surface questions, in a sense. One comment is that I'm happy to hear that you're going to be meeting with CRIA. Maybe something that's happened here has allowed that meeting to happen. I'm not sure. Maybe some of his comments felt controversial enough that we're actually getting some people back to the table. I'm not sure. I hope this meeting will help to focus our efforts and move it ahead.
As all MPs around this table, we are constantly being told that there are very different issues that have to be addressed. We have to address the issues of educational usage and we have to address the issues of creators, and they seem to be at odds. I've said at different points that I find it's ironic that educational institutions, which I believe are very much all about learning and creating, would find themselves in that position, that they're at odds with the creators. But that's the way it is.
I wish I had some hard data on who is bearing the cost. In some very basic exchanges, I think we lack a sense of what the costs are that are not.... For example, one of the costs is the two different approaches you're putting forward with regard to Internet material for educational purposes. You put forward the two approaches: amending the definition of “fair dealing”, which would expand the scope to encompass teaching and study by educational institutions using such material; and you talk about amending the act to provide a blanket licence. So there are two models. Is it possible to break down the costs of these two approaches? In each approach, who is bearing the particular costs?
I guess we have the rights management system, the access CANCOPY model, which many people and many organizations tell us works very well, and then we have the educational institutions, which find that model works against their learning moments and against their ability to actually get the material to their students.
I'm still at a loss, quite frankly, in trying to figure out which way to advise you on these two approaches, because I just don't have any nuts and bolts on that.
View Wendy Lill Profile
NDP (NS)
View Wendy Lill Profile
2004-03-25 10:43
I want to make one comment on what I'm hearing and pick up on what Mr. Lincoln said about what your process is.
We just finished a broadcast study that took us a great length of time. It was a very complicated area of study. We had some experts working with us who provided us with a paper, which we used as a backgrounder, but it also provided, in each subject area, several options. It basically talked about the status quo, talked about the various positions that we were hearing widely. It tried to reach various points of synthesis and gave us three or four places to look at and to, quite frankly, battle over in this committee. We did that at great length.
It seems to me that has to be a process you're experiencing as well. In your process, you have to be battling over give and take, and what you're going to give in and what you're going to hold onto. We're frustrated that we're not seeing that. All we're seeing are the two lines. It's just two, two, two. We need more than two. We have to see three. We have to see four or five, or one, that's right. That's just trying to get at what we're looking for so that we can add to this collective growth here.
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