Independent Report Blasts Access Copyright Over Lack of Transparency |
| Print | |
|
Friday February 15, 2008
|
|||||||||||||
|
One year after it was completed by University of Toronto law professor Martin L. Friedland, the results on an independent study on Access Copyright and royalty distribution system has been released [ I have undertaken a number of other public policy studies over the years, including such reasonably complex topics as pension reform, securities regulation, and national security, and have never encountered anything quite as complex as the Access Copyright distribution system. It is far from transparent. Very little is written down in a consolidated, cohesive, comprehensive, or comprehensible manner. There is no manual describing in detail how the distribution system operates. The report continues by examining the history of Access Copyright, comparing it to other collectives, and identifying inequities in the distribution structure. For example, it reveals that "in the distribution for 2005 under the federal government licence, the publishers received $188,256 for scholarly journals and the creators received nothing." The report includes 20 recommendations for change, which include:
The Access Copyright response is posted in this version of the report - some recommendations were accepted, while others, including the major recommendation on governance, was rejected. Comments (6)
margaretB
said:
|
|||||||||||||
|
A Publishing Runaway Train Not that anyone should be surprised by this? What's amazing is just how long it Canadians put up with a broken railroad before anyone stops to take a second look at a regime such as AC. These findings are are more evidence that the multinationals-driven content world we all live in, increasingly got corrupted by publishers who scream "YOU OWE ME" copyright cash at every turn! Books, periodicals, videos, and oh yes MUSIC (which has many collectives in Canada - isn't it more than a dozen?). Combined it has become royalties heaped on top of royalties, heaped on... It's the publishing lawyers on these publishing-rights-driven collective boards operating largely 'in secret' that have successfully eeked out more and more novel ways to garner themselves hefty sums, all-the-while the source creators of the content receive less and less, or as this report suggests, in many instances zip-zero-zilch! |
|
... I had a look at the Access Copyright distribution manual. Maybe it's just that I'm not a professor, but I found it very simple and straightforward. The sharing of money by AC has always been contentious. Most publishers take the view that money from copying scientific journals really shouldn't end up going to poets and illustrators of children's books. As for the secrecy nonsense, every distribution rule was OKd by the creators on the Board. And from what I'm reading here, Friedland seriously got it wrong on a few points. Why - not that's it's his business anyway - can't contracts override AC rules? This hasn't been plain sailing in in the UK, it led many publishers and the entire newspaper industry to opt out of the collective there, and as in the US 100% of money goes to publishers, Canada isn't out of line. Finally, the publishers who get money from AC do share it with their authors. Sorry, I know that bashing publishers and colletcives is what this blog is all about, but not all authors think it's doing a bad job. |
|
... The Writers Union blocked an attempt to change the size of the Access Copyright Board two years ago, so it's a bit rich to hear they welcome the report. Anyway, why is a review of distribution making a "major recommendation" on governance? |
|
Pay the mailman too? Those are interesting comments and I'd be interested in seeing more of what people think. Personally, I've always had a problem with publishers getting royalties in the first place. Does the printer get royalties? How about other facilitators and distributors of printed material, such as maybe the mailman. Everybody deserves to get paid for their work, but just because you print a book or flyer and send it out doesn't seem to be a good reason to demand royalties. One could perhaps argue that a nicely made letter press edition is a work of art, but in a digital environment, claiming "publishing" royalties on a file starts to sound downright ridiculous. |
|
... The reason publishers (and authors) get royalties is that these are one of the forms of payment for being a publisher or author. The printer gets paid (by the publisher), and the other "facilitators and distributors" most definitely get paid too. |
|
Writer I've refused to affiliate with Access Copyright for years and was finally adopted by Copybec, the Quebec organization which is a much fairer to creators. Access Copyright has always been a publishers' organization, capable of calculating the money owed to publishers to the penny, while distributing token lump sums to creators. We are owed this money because photocopying reduces sales. Printers do not lose money when materials are copied, they've been paid. Mailmen do not lose money when materials are photocopied. Publishers and creators do. Access Copyright should be able to do better for creators. Other copyright collectives do. |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
