Jennifer Ditchburn, THE CANADIAN PRESS

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Speak Up

OTTAWA - There were no iPods, peer-to-peer file sharing sites or digital copyright wars back when Billy Bragg first belted out "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward," but the tune seems completely a propos to his latest political fight.

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THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

British musician Billy Bragg speaks during a press conference on establishing rules for the digital culture online at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa, Ont., on Friday November 20, 2009.

The British alt rocker teamed up with Safwan Javad of Canada's Wide Mouth Mason, the Canadian Association of Songwriters and the NDP's Heritage critic Charlie Angus Friday to push for a new approach to dealing with music downloads.

"The Wii is not going back in the box," Bragg told reporters, lamenting that kids these days save up for video games before albums.

"Technology is moving forward and we've got to go forward with it."

Bragg and a host of other artists in Europe and across Canada would like to see new ways to pay performers for music available on the Net while still protecting downloaders who are sharing the product.

He said that music labels will often sell music catalogues to Internet sites and artists don't get a cut.

"We have a slogan that where money is made, artists must be paid. What's implicit in that slogan is that we should go after those people who are making profit from giving our stuff away for free or selling it online," Bragg said.

"The other edge of that particular argument is that people who are sharing files...really should not be within the reach of the copyright law."

The Canadian government consulted Canadians and industry figures last fall about proposed changes to its sorely outdated copyright laws after facing overwhelming opposition to a bill tabled last year.

Bill C-61 would have made it illegal for any Canadian to circumvent digital copyright "locks" put on pieces of audio or video, rendering it impossible for people to share material with impunity.

One of the ideas offered by Angus would be to charge a levy on the purchase of any MP3 player, such as the government did when Canadians purchased blank CDs or cassettes. The idea then was to collect the money and then compensate artists for material that was used when people made their old "mixed tapes."

Don Quarles of the songwriters association said another possibility would be to charge Internet users an extra fee on their monthly bill. The money raised would go into a pot that is redistributed to artists. How the downloaders would be differentiated from those who didn't exchange music remains to be explained.

"A license fee of a few dollars a month paid by those who wish to file share would create a new business model, one that creates good value for the consumer and ease of access to the music, while ensuring the music creators and rights holders are farily compensated for the use and enjoyment of their work," said Quarles.

Bragg, a longtime supporter of the labour movement, treated striking workers outside the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que. to a free concert in the rain. The 420 employees of that institution and the Canadian War Museum, members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, have been on strike for two months.