(Ottawa) The Supreme Court of Canada rules that songwriters are entitled to one royalty, not two, when their works are offered online for users to download or listen to online.
Posted yesterday at 11:38 p.m.
This decision rendered Friday by the highest court in the country clarifies the scope of an article of the Copyright Act concerning the making available of a work to the public online.
Canada adopted the provision after signing an international treaty that required member countries to protect on-demand transmissions and give authors the right to control when and how their work is made available for download or streaming.
The Copyright Board of Canada ruled that the statutory provision meant that the making available of a song or other artistic work was a separately protected activity for which there must be compensation.
This would allow artists to receive two payments when a work is distributed online: one when it is made available on a platform such as iTunes or Spotify, and a second when it is actually streamed or downloaded by a listener.
The Federal Court of Appeal overturned this decision.
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) and Music Canada, which represents major record companies, have asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeal’s decision and adopt the Commission’s interpretation.
Parties including Apple Canada and major telecommunications companies say the court should reject this position on the grounds that copyright law does not require the payment of two royalties each time a work is broadcast streaming or downloaded.
On behalf of the majority of the Supreme Court, Justice Malcolm Rowe clarified that the Copyright Act does not exist exclusively for the benefit of authors.
“Its general objective is to balance the rights of authors and those of users by guaranteeing fair remuneration to authors while facilitating public access to works. Achieving this balance benefits society. Authors are encouraged to produce more works, and users have access to works they can draw inspiration from to make their own original artistic and intellectual creations,” he wrote.
The court said the Commission’s interpretation undermined the purpose of copyright law, violating the principle of “technological neutrality” by requiring users to pay additional royalties to access works online.
“Following this principle, in the absence of a contrary intention of Parliament, the Copyright Act should not be interpreted in such a way as to favor or oppose any particular form of technology,” added Mr. Rowe. It protects authors and users by ensuring that works involve the same rights and give rise to the same royalties, regardless of the technological means used to put the works into circulation. »
The Copyright Act grants authors rights relating to the reproduction and performance of their works.
“Like offline distributions, the downloading or streaming of works involves only one right and requires the payment of a single royalty – a reproduction royalty for downloads or a execution for streaming broadcasts, ”wrote the judge.
According to the law, a work is “performed as soon as it is made available for streaming on demand”, he added. At this point, a fee is payable. If the work is subsequently streamed by a user, no additional royalties are due, as the streaming is part of a continuing act of performance that began when the work was made available.
The value of those rights was not at issue in the appeal, Judge Rowe noted. Therefore, setting the appropriate fees where these rights come into play is a matter for the Commission to decide.