Music Creators Applaud Songwriters’ P2P Proposal
Posted by Tyler Kinch on December 6th, 2007
Montreal—The Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC) applauded the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) today for its innovative, forward-thinking proposal to provide Canadians with legal and affordable access to file-sharing services.
“This is the first progressive proposal we’ve seen in Canada to address file-sharing,” said Andrew Cash, CMCC spokesperson. “It’s telling that creators, the people who actually make the music being shared, are the people showing leadership and pushing for a made-in-Canada approach to file-sharing. We can only hope that the Canadian government will follow the Songwriters’ lead and begin exploring alternatives to the failed ‘locks, lawsuits and lobbying’ strategy of the major labels.”
The publication of the Songwriters’ proposal comes just days before the Government of Canada is expected to introduce copyright legislation, modeled on strict American laws. It’s anticipated that the new legislation will give rights-holders new rights over both music recordings and the digital tools, such as digital rights management (DRM), used to lock up that music.
“We don’t know if the Songwriters have all the answers,” states CMCC member Steven Page, “but we do know that this proposal moves in the right direction. The Songwriters’ proposal offers tremendous value to both consumers and rights-holders. The Songwriters have given us the framework to come together to talk about digital music. The CMCC wholeheartedly endorses the Songwriters’ efforts, and looks forward to joining all Canadian stakeholders in considering the merits of this proposal.”
Full text of the SAC proposal may be found here.
Highlights from the SAC proposal:
- We define Music File Sharing as the sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain.Since the new right is limited to activities that take place without motive of financial gain, parties who receive compensation for file sharing would not be covered by this right. Therefore, this new right is distinct from rights licensed by legal music sites like iTunes and PureTracks.
- The new right would make it legal to share music between two or more parties, whether over Peer to Peer networks, wireless networks, email, CD, DVD, hard drives etc. Distinct from private copying, this new right would authorize the sharing of music with other individuals.
- In exchange for this sharing of their work, Creators and rights holders would be entitled to receive a monthly license fee from each internet and wireless account in Canada.
- We propose a licence fee of $5.00 per internet subscription, per month. Payment of this fee would remove the stigma of illegality from file sharing. In addition, it would represent excellent value to the consumer, since this fee would grant access to the majority of the world’s repertoire of music. Existing download subscription services generally charge considerably more than $5.00 per month, while offering a mere fraction of the file-sharing repertoire