Copyright Act, Section 5(3), specifically provides copyright protection for sound recordings. Section 5(4) provides the owner of the copyright in the sound recording with the exclusive right to reproduce the sound recording in any material form. In the WIPO Experts Committees working on the possible Protocol to the Berne Convention and the possible New Instrument for the Protection of the Rights of Performers and Producers of Phonograms, there has yet to be any thorough discussion of the extent to which the reproduction right would apply to specific ephemeral "reproductions" effected as a necessary incident of a digital transmission. Whether such temporary reproductions are covered by the reproduction right is a question on which international consensus is lacking. Similarly, the point was not contemplated during the negotiations for TRIPS, where there is nothing to show that the reproduction right in Article 14(2) applies to a temporary reproduction in random access memory. Nothing in the Canadian Copyright Act precludes such a temporary reproduction from falling under the exclusive reproduction right. However, this point has yet to be clarified with respect to the reproduction right in the Canadian Copyright Act. With reference to the information highway and the new demands of the digital environment, this question has recently been the subject of some domestic discussion in terms of copyright works in general.
