By Ferne Downey

The conversation about copyright is frequently split into two camps—the makers and the users. The people who often get left out are those of us in the middle, the performers who breathe life into the work. Repeatedly, ACTRA is erroneously lumped in with the corporate interests of big record companies or Hollywood film studio behemoths. Unusual bedfellows indeed. We’re a union of professional performers. Studios and producers are our employers—employers we took a strike against in 2007 in order to get fair compensation for our work in digital media.

It may seem obvious why big studios and consumers are passionate about copyright, but perhaps not always so clear what interest an actor has in it. The fact is audio-visual artists—including actors like myself—have next to no rights in Canadian copyright law. Zippity-do-dah. Lawyers will talk about it in more accurate legal terms, but I’m an actor and that’s what we call it. As performers, our only source of protection are the collective agreements our union negotiates for us. Without ACTRA, I wouldn’t have any claim to a cast credit on a TV show or residuals from any of the work I do in all forms of recorded media. That’s why we’re passionate about having our laws modernized to include new rights for audio-visual performers.

As performers, we always seek audiences; we absolutely want “users” to see and share our work. We embrace new technology that allows more people to see more of our work when and where they want to see it. When we buy a CD or a DVD, we should be able to legally copy it on all our personal devices, computers, iPods, phones, and so on. That’s why one of ACTRA’s priorities is expanding the private copying regime. Private copying has put millions of dollars directly into the pockets of singers and musicians since it was introduced in 1999. One decade later, that regime applies to devices people hardly use today—blank audio cassettes, mini-discs, and CD-Rs. We believe it makes sense to update that levy to devices that people actually use today and continue to provide modest remuneration to performers. We also need to expand those rights now only available to audio artists to audio-visual artists.

While we need to make sure artists are compensated for their work and able to pay their bills, for performers, copyright reform is about much more than money. We also want to have the basic right to control our image. For actors, our image is intrinsically connected to everything we do. That’s why ACTRA is pressing for “moral rights”—the basic right to get credited for our work or object to an unauthorized distortion or use of our performance.

It’s getting embarrassing—and economically damaging—that Canada has failed to modernize our national copyright law in keeping with international norms, something we signalled we would do by signing the World Intellectual Property Organization Internet treaties in 1997. The one upside to lagging so far behind the rest of the world in updating our copyright laws is that we can draw upon the lessons learned by others and find the best, most effective tools. We’re not advocating Canada adopt “American-style” laws, or “European-style” laws for that matter. What we are advocating is a made-in-Canada solution that takes lessons from what has worked and hasn’t worked around the world and tailors them to suit our needs.

Copyright is a contentious issue; I’m under no illusion that anyone is going to magically come up with a comprehensive copyright regime that pleases everyone. Put three random people in a room to talk about copyright and chances are they’ll find something to disagree on. It’s this lack of consensus that has repeatedly derailed attempts to update Canada’s embarrassingly out-of-date laws.

This old approach of sitting in separate corners has failed and served no one. The only way we are going to move forward is to talk about what we do agree upon and find a consensus. Let’s find that balance between users, makers, and creators. That’s what ACTRA is hoping for in the current round of federal-government copyright consultations.

Ferne Downey is the president of ACTRA, the national union representing over 21,000 professional performers in English-language recorded media in Canada. She has worked for 30 years as an actor in television, film, live theatre, and radio. Downey has been deeply involved in advocating for the rights of fellow  performers since first being elected to ACTRA’s council in 1991.