Copyright adversaries find common ground in high cost of hearings

Broadcasters and music industry players are readying themselves for high-level talks on the high costs of resolving copyright disputes. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), and the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) are expected to begin meeting in late May to find ways to expedite Copyright Board of Canada hearings and set their recommendations down in a submission to the soon-to-begin section 92 copyright reform process. The three groups are often adversaries before the board, but believe they can cooperate to save themselves millions of dollars per year in copyright hearing costs. Richard Cavanagh, VP of radio services at the CAB, tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the number of hearings to settle tariffs has increased in the past several years and is costing the industry millions of dollars. "For radio alone now, you’re looking at three separate copyright tariffs and that means three separate renewals and three separate hearings. At $500,000 to $750,000 a crack to put on one of these things – that’s just on our side – that’s really expensive. Similarly, without knowing a lot of detail about it, I would guess that the collectives are paying a like amount. You’re talking about millions of dollars in hearing fees that could maybe be better spent elsewhere. Maybe you could find a way to streamline this kind of thing. "I was sitting at the Copyright Board hearing last year where CAB and CMRRA (Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency) and SODRAC (Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada) were doing the tariff hearing thing and we pulled out our financial analysis of the financial impact of the tariff on the industry and then they pulled out their financial analysis of the impact, and they were almost identical. I’m sure they were $75,000 or $80,000 apiece and they were almost identical. Not to say we still wouldn’t do our own work but there’s probably some ways of just making the system a bit more efficient." Though the trio, and possibly others, will be sitting around the same table to come to grips with the enormous cost of the current copyright regime, Cavanagh says some debates will likely be left off the agenda. The various parties are unlikely to find common ground on all the issues, he says. "On some fundamentals the copyright collectives and the broadcasters and the music industry representatives may never come to agreement. But we may be able to come to some agreement on a way to better administer what it is we have to deal with now. I think the task is not to get into the philosophizing, which is best left to the economists…Where we need to stick to our guns is, is there a better mousetrap that we can build here as far as the administration of copyright is concerned?" Toward that end, the three groups will likely meet near the end of May, then again as many as two or three times in June to hammer out some recommendations. Those suggestions, he says, will then be put to the s.92 process, likely by way of an invitation by government to table its report. Government officials, Cavanagh says, have been kept in the loop and are looking forward to the outcome of the meetings. "We’re getting the message that they’re extremely interested in, first of all, that we’re even willing to undertake this. It’s kind of forward thinking, really, in terms of being visionary…They recognize that to bring a group of stakeholders together that might traditionally be very strong adversaries, but get them onto a platform where they might largely agree on a series of improvements that might be made to the system . The message I’m getting from the copyright policy folks is that they’re very interested in what we have to say." Any changes to the regime would likely have to be made by revision to the Copyright Act, which Cavanagh says could be made more explicit and with a better defined mandate for the board. Changes will need to be made quickly, he says, as copyright challenges continue to mount in a digital environment. "It’s moving faster all the time," Cavanagh says. "I think there’s a fundamental disconnect between this area of broadcaster responsibility and the whole legislative administration of copyright on one side, and just how quickly the technology is facilitating the development of broadcast platforms on the other side. You’ve got one that’s seriously lagging behind the other. I don’t know if that’s been explicitly identified as a motivation for undertaking this exercise, but it is implicit. I think everyone knows, sitting around the table, that… we have a system now that’s becoming increasingly, shall we say, less efficient. And that’s because broadcasting itself, and technology, is becoming more efficient." Exact dates for the proposed roundtable have yet to be nailed down, but Cavanagh says the commitments are firm and the only challenges are now to clear scheduling conflicts. But, he notes, even the choice of a moderator is nearing finalization – the University of Ottawa’s Daniel Gervais.

Copyright adversaries find common ground in high cost of hearings

News | 04/16/2003 4:00 am EDT

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