Hill Times Letter: Good copyright legislation

Letter to the Hill Times Editor published July 18, 2005

Re: “Industry players react to omnibus Copyright Bill C-60,” (The Hill Times, July 11).

This article demonstrates what many of us on the ground in creator communities worry about. Various “industry players” from the incumbent media, content and “software manufacturing” industries are incorrectly seen as proxies for creators and innovators. This becomes very dangerous as the government enacts policy which will favour incumbents against new competitors trying to embrace transformative change. It is as if these “industry players” have come up with a solution to the innovators’ dilemma: lobby government.

The Canadian Independent Recording Artists’ Association (CIRAA) reports that less than five per cent of Canadian musicians are signed to labels. While most of those musicians who do have recording contracts are not with the major labels represented by CRIA, CRIA reports that they represent over 95 per cent of the Canadian recorded music market. This is a clear indication of a non-competitive market in need of correction.

As an independent software creator, I know all too well that a similar situation exists where the Canadian arm of the Business Software Alliance falsely claims to represent the Canadian software industry. The BSA only represents (primarily U.S.) “software manufacturers,” with “software manufacturing” representing a narrow subset of methods of production, distribution and funding of software. By far the vast majority of software created (possibly 95 per cent, but inadequate market analysis has been done) is only used in-house and not distributed at all. Of distributed software, “software manufacturing” vendors only represent part, with competitive methodologies such as Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) representing the fastest-growing segment of the distributed software marketplace.

In order for Canada to have good copyright policy, policy-makers must break free of the incumbents who seek to protect “the way things used to be.” They need to recognize that there is a full spectrum of development, distribution and funding models for each type of creativity. Policy-makers must recognize that most of the lobby groups they are hearing from so far represent very small constituencies promoting very specialized options, attempting to remove free market choice from creators/innovators and their audiences/customers.

Russell McOrmond
Ottawa, Ont.