Parties on all sides of the copyright debate are beginning to sort out the tasks at hand to move on the agenda kick started by the passage of Bill C-32.

Groups including the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers, actra, educational representatives and publishers are meeting to establish a collective and set tariffs to present to the Copyright Board by the Sept. 1 deadline, now that creators have won the contentious neighboring rights.

Bill C-32 represents phase two of copyright reform and d’es not deal with electronic rights and the information highway, the subject of phase-three reform.

‘Phase two of copyright reform has brought Canada’s outdated copyright laws only up to the standards that most developed countries had reached in the 1980s,’ G. Ken Thompson, vp, general counsel of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, told those attending a summer conference on copyright issues.

‘Our government cannot delay pursuing the essential phase-three reforms to Canada’s Copyright Act that must immediately follow the Bill C-32 amendments so that Canadian creators and cultural industries will benefit from the new markets and opportunities resulting from advances in technology both domestically and internationally.’

The high-profile neighboring rights issue essentially involves payment to performers and producers when their music is aired on radio or possibly in television broadcasts. (Current fees collected from broadcasters go to composers.)

‘Ten or 12 different groups are meeting now to decide on our approach, form a collective and to file the tariffs,’ says Brian Chater, president of the Canadian Independent Record Production Association. ‘We have not established what configuration the collective will take and I have no idea right now what the tariff rate will be. We will probably only decide the day before Sept. 1.’

Once the tariff is set, it will be phased in over three years. Chater expects that broadcasters will oppose the tariff rate, which means hearings will be set for 1998. The new fees are expected to be split 50-50 between the music producer and the performer.

‘The broadcast fee will presumably be comparable with the current socan rate for authors and publishers,’ predicted David Vavar, a professor of law from Osgoode Hall Law School. Radio broadcasters pay 3.2% of their advertising revenue to socan while television stations pay 2.1%. (It has yet to be established, however, whether television broadcasters will be required to pay the new neighboring rights.)

David Basskin, executive director of the Canadian Music Publishers Association, says although the amounts which producers and performers will receive is an unknown, ‘this is much more than a moral victory. Millions of dollars have been invested in getting this, so you can be sure it will be worthwhile.’

Another issue in the long, drawn-out copyright debate was the ‘ephemeral exception.’ Television stations currently make monthly payments comprised of 2.1% of their gross revenues for rights to music used in television productions. However, in theory, currently if broadcasters tape a program with music for later broadcast ­ such as a concert, church service or skating performance ­ they have to pay for that right to tape.

The bill also stated that broadcasters were required to pay to transfer music from one format to another. It was a clause that broadcasters were rarely called to adhere to. Nonetheless, the cab lobbied for an exemption to this clause, and got it, so that as long as a program is used within 30 days, no new fees need be paid. However, in another clause the revised bill says no new fees will be collected, unless there is a collective in place, something the cab opposes.

cab president Michael McCabe says although he was disappointed by certain aspects of the bill, he wants to move forward with the cab’s current priorities: advising its members on C-32’s impact, preparing for a neighboring rights hearing and pressing the government to require that tariffs be based on competitive realities, and planning for phase-three strategy.