While Stephen Stohn admits most people tend to glaze over when talk turns to copyright, it’s a topic he’s truly passionate about.

‘When you think ‘copyright’, you think, ‘That doesn’t sound too interesting,’ ‘ says the chair of the cftpa’s copyright committee. ‘That’s what my wife [cftpa chair Linda Schuyler] says anyway.’

But Stohn and the copyright committee are responsible for more within the association than perhaps the committee’s name lets on.

The cftpa heads up the Canadian Retransmission Collective, and is, in fact, its sole shareholder. The collective has collected approximately $40 million for Canadian producers over the last 10 years, says Stohn, much of that from international cable companies broadcasting Canadian programming. Over the past year, however, the copyright committee has been instrumental in forming two other collectives: the Producers’ Audio Visual Collective of Canada and the Educational Rights Collective.

pavc collects a levy for blank videocassettes sold in Europe. ‘In Europe, when people by a blank audiovisual tape there is a little levy added to the cost, which goes into a pool,’ explains Stohn. ‘If you’re a Canadian producer whose show is seen in Europe, you get a share of that pool.’

The Educational Rights Collective is designed to monitor schools and universities which take television programs off the air and show them in classrooms for educational purposes. The collective, under the copyright committee, will take a yet-to-be-determined fee for use of the program, which will be handed back to the producers of the show.

Because of the international focus of the copyright committee, it often acts as the primary liaison between the cftpa and different producers associations around the world.

Among its international initiatives, the committee is taking a leadership role in setting up an international standard audiovisual number (isan) for videotapes. Much like the international standard book number (isbn) at the beginning of a book, the isan is a 16-digit number that will identify audiovisual works and help to combat piracy. The number will be embedded in the digital stream of a videocassette.

Stohn, who incidentally is also an entertainment lawyer and partner with Schuyler in Toronto’s Epitome Pictures, says the copyright committee will also represent Canadian producers in the much-publicized iCravetv dispute.