Although Parliament was dissolved before Bill C-32 made it through its second reading, Bill C-11, which contains identical language, has since been reintroduced by Parliament: "Collective society" means a society, association or corporation that carries on the business of collective administration of copyright or of the remuneration right conferred by section 19 or 81 for the benefit of those who, by assignment, grant of licence, appointment of it as their agent or otherwise, authorize it to act on their behalf in relation to that collective administration, and (a) operates a licensing scheme, applicable in relation to a repertoire of works, performer’s performances, sound recordings or communication signals of more than one author, performer, sound recording maker or broadcaster, pursuant to which the society, association or corporation sets out classes of uses that it agrees to authorize under this Act, and the royalties and terms and conditions on which it agrees to authorize those classes of uses, or (b) carries on the business of collecting and distributing royalties or levies payable pursuant to this Act[1]This definition divides collective societies into four legal regimes: music and performing rights, general collective administration, particular cases (retransmissions and certain educational uses), and private copying levies.
[4] In practice, the following types of copyrights are covered by the general regime: Sections 71-76 of the Copyright Act create a regime regulating involuntary licences for the retransmission of distant radio and televisions signals and the reproduction and public performance by education institutions of radio and television programs for educational or training purposes.
[6] The Copyright Board of Canada is an independent administrative tribunal consisting of at most five members appointed to five year terms by the government.
Unique among Canadian regulatory agencies, the Chairman of the Board tends to be drawn from sitting or retired judges of a superior court.
Legal scholars have argued that a number of structural elements of the Canadian system contribute to these inefficiencies including mandatory filing of tariffs by collective management organizations and the Board's inability to award costs.
Collective management organizations, for example, are only capable of categorizing different copyrighted works into broad categories due to the limitations of regulatory specificity.
[10] In addition Katz cites the "superstar phenomenon" which recognizes that the vast majority of copyright royalties are payments for works belonging to a disproportionately small number of individuals.