Current Priorities

Below you will find updates on key policy issues for the Writers Guild of Canada.

Copyright Reform

The federal government has introduced an amendment to the Copyright Act, Bill C-11. An exact copy of the previous copyright legislation, Bill C-32, there is very little in the Bill for the audio-visual sector.  It grants new uses (backing up, timeshifting, private copying) to consumers without any form of compensation to creators for the additional copying.  This is contrary to our position which is that consumers should have a wide variety of allowed uses of content as long as there is a revenue stream to creators.

Copyright owners will have the ability to add digital locks to their content to protect their revenue stream however the additional uses effectively force copyright owners to use digital locks rather than leaving it as an option.  As consumers do not like digital locks and some sectors, such as music, have moved away from them, this is a backward-looking amendment.  Bill C-11 also expands on the notion of private copying to include copying for ‘private purposes’ which would allow you to provide copies of a work to many friends and family, thereby undercutting revenues generated by those friends and family buying their own copy. 

There are a number of other provisions that concern us.  The new right to create non-commercial digital mash-ups is too broad and vague.  There are multiple amendments regarding educational use of copyright works which will undercut all educational licensing. ISP liability provisions have no teeth. 

And the Bill does not address the fact that the Copyright Act is silent on who is the author of the audio-visual work, so if there was collective licensing creators would not benefit, only copyright owners.  As the WGC and the DGC have come to an agreement to share authorship of the audio-visual work we were disappointed that this was not included in the Bill.

The WGC is working with a number of creator groups both through the Creators Copyright Coalition and the Canadian Conference of the Arts to provide a united front to the federal government.  While we have some differences on issues we are working on common positions on the major points to try to be more effective. 

In February, the WGC raised our concerns about Bill C-32 when we appeared before the Legislative Committee. We do not expect to appear before the new committee because the government has said that those who appeared on Bill C-32 will not be asked to appear on Bill C-11. We will however submit to the new legislative committee (when it is struck) our wording for suggested amendments to the bill.

The WGC will suggest two specific amendments to address our concerns about copyright:

1) Delete or amend section 29.22 (“the Reproduction for private purposes” clause) which, by allowing for free copies for ‘friends and family,’ undermines the market for original sales.

2)   Define the author of the audio-visual work as the screenwriter and director, and,

We will keep members up-to-date on developments as the copyright legislation moves through parliament and committee. 

Digital Media

The WGC is involved in digital media issues on a number of fronts. In 2009 the CRTC decided to renew the New Media Exemption Order for another five years.  They also referred the question of whether the CRTC has jurisdiction over new media broadcasting to the Federal Court.  A coalition of the WGC, DGC, CMPA and ACTRA engaged legal counsel to represent us at Federal Court and we participated in the reference.  Unfortunately the Federal Court determined that there was no broadcasting going on.  As there were perceived flaws in the legal reasoning of the Federal Court the coalition has sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.  We are waiting to hear at this time.

In the meantime, the CRTC has also determined that affiliated new media broadcasting undertakings (also known as affiliated NMBUs or the websites of broadcasters and cable companies) should report to the CRTC on their new media broadcasting revenues, expenses, programming and traffic.  As there is no consistency in how those elements are being reported or measured, the CRTC struck a working group to help with creating standards.  The WGC is participating in the Working Group.  The first reporting will be of new media broadcasting revenues and expenses starting with the first quarter of 2011.  Later in the year after more Working Group meetings the affiliated NMBUs will have to also report on programming and traffic.  All of this data should assist us in knowing what is really going on in the affiliated broadcasting world and to help us prepare arguments for when the New Media Exemption Order expires in 2014.

We are also working on finding new sources of financing for original digital media.  With the growth of web series we are advocating with the federal government to extend the domestic tax credit to web series (currently limited to programs that have a theatrical distributor or broadcaster).  We have also proposed an interactive tax credit modelled on the tax credit in many provinces (eg. Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit).