Alex's Reflections on Gomery

What an unusual treat to meet a TV celebrity of sorts at McGill. John Gomery, who could seemingly be anyone’s grandpa, provided an interesting overview of the copyright board at a level that even musicians could understand. Some thoughts are as follows:

Gomery firstly demonstrated the opposition of interests – industry versus heritage – which, in a very clinical and departmental way, reflect the larger condition: a yawning gap of purpose between producers of art as a commodity (which it is, of course) and producers of art that is exclusively self-purposed and non-economic. Of course, most good art is a bit of both. Similarly, from the most judicial standpoint, both of these sides have merit which thus leads the design of public policy to a grinding stalemate.

What I would call a “minor solution” or even just a treatment for the problem of unlicensed media-sharing came to Canada at one point in the form of a levy on blank cassettes which was then distributed to artist collectives. Any amplification of this to address issues in digital media is evidently a parliamentary concern and more openly subject to the will of the people. The unresolved issues of this wider application are related to its “open-endedness”: all users pay for an untraceable problem that not everyone causes, and artists collectives don’t necessarily represent everyone that deserves to be compensated, not to mention that verification of the records involved is an extremely arduous and no doubt expensive task which funnels money away from being properly distributed to creators. What’s interesting about royalties is that artists seem to appreciate them, and that royalty payments do their job without crippling the media industries that make them possible. Such an idea that is basically efficient for much of the time probably has enough merit to stay put.

Conversely, it surprises me that the idea of supporting artists via an updated levy system has not come up or has not been strongly voiced by the community. My prediction is that when the wounds of Big Music’s collapse heal in earnest, assuming still-further growth of populist, non-commercial or independent representation of artists, a new or renewed voice for a levy model may indeed appear with the necessary strength and public respectability for a vote of democratic confidence (certainly compared to the last proposed copyright reform in Canada and assuming that a version of “Google Music” doesn’t magnetize public will away from this).

What I want to caution against is the idea that the law can solve any problem. Indeed we should remind ourselves that, with a toolbox full of hammers, not every objective is a nail. When a large number of people have strong and different viewpoints on an issue – the creation of art versus its unlicensed distribution – the wisest thing can be to do nothing during the period of “populist regress,” that is, until a clear direction of opinion emerges. Excessive regulation to ensure a seemingly “fair” deal for artists may not actually contribute to art in the end, presenting a matter of significant ethical complication into the discussion as Gomery alluded to on discriminating between “creators who do and creators who don’t want to be paid for their work.” While collective-based royalties and levies on internet services should be explored to the fullest extent the public will allow to the advantage of artists, a cautious approach should be taken on more direct public funding, again in Gomery’s words, because artists “should not become employees of the state.”

Lastly, regulatory steps to remedy copyright violations endemic at today’s levels will have to be small and segmented, rather than intrusive and overbearing. An example would be a small fee charged through your internet service provider to be distributed to content creators (not just music, but books, newspapers, etc.) as a hybrid of the way that 911 fees are charged on your cellphone bill and levies were collected on blank copying media. The question is in what proportion levies like this should be distributed to creators and on what basis these proportions are determined. If an answer is practicable, the solution that results could be an interesting and appropriate response to the problems presented. From there, the challenge lies in international agreements with countries that have even poorer copyright protection environments (like China) or more strange (like the USA), in which Canadian innovations will hopefully, one day, find an ear.