Graham Henderson calls for full and meaningful review of the Copyright Act in 2017 in Policy Options Op-Ed

In an op-ed published today for Policy Options, a digital magazine published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Music Canada President and CEO Graham Henderson details the Value Gap, which is an issue affecting all cultural creators, and warns that action must be taken to restore integrity to the marketplace.

Henderson describes what led to the Value Gap, defined as “the gross mismatch between the volume of music being enjoyed by consumers and the revenues being returned to the music community.” Identifying the problem as “a product of decisions made by governments around the world that have allowed cultural content to be distributed, made available, consumed and monetized by others without proper payment to creators,” Henderson points to out-of-date rules and regulations, such as exemptions that have benefited broadcast and technology industries to the detriment of creators.

Henderson outlines a series of policy recommendations that the government should consider immediately to restore balance to the world in which creators live.

Some of the actions are:

• Ending all cross-subsidies paid by creators that subsidize corporations – the outdated $1.25 million radio royalty exemption in the Copyright Act is one example in Canada.
• Consider federal policies to attract foreign direct investment in the domestic music economy, as Ontario, British Columbia, and municipalities across Canada have done.
• Examine and reform the Copyright Board of Canada, the tribunal that is responsible for setting royalty rates that many in the cultural industries rely on. A recent Senate of Canada report found the Board to be “dated, dysfunctional and in dire need of reform,” signalling that reforms are urgently needed. “The government needs to turn the Copyright Board into a true business development office for the creative and user communities,” writes Henderson.

Henderson concludes by calling for “a full and meaningful review that identifies and recommends necessary amendments to the Act,” and reiterates that “the only way the government can restore integrity to the marketplace is to curtail all cross-subsidies and the outdated exemptions on which they are based.”

Read the full article on the Policy Options website.