News

University of Alberta Looking to Walk Away from Access Copyright

The momentum within Canadian higher education to walk away from Access Copyright in light of its demands for a massive increase in tariffs continues to grow.  The University of Alberta, one of the country’s largest universities, has apparently sent notices that it is seriously contemplating walking away at the end of the year.  The increase at the U of A alone would involve an annual payment rise from $763,000 to $1,835,662.

4 Comments

  1. Interesting to see how the faculty and Access Copyright will react to this.

  2. Making real “cents” of it…FTEs
    $1,835,662? Including benefits, how many FTEs is that? Perhaps 15, give or take? You could create an entire “Copyright” department of 7 or 8 people, even 10, whose sole purpose is to attain rights and, financially, the UofA would still be much further ahead and probably better off in this case.

  3. Finally some real numbers on the effect of the proposed increase. I went back and had a look at the entries about this, and the talk was about the 1300% increase in the base rate, with little mention of the changes to the tariff that reduce the charge.

    The overall impact for the UofA works out to 241%. Not an insignificant increase by any means, but a number that seems to take into account all of the factors rather than just the base rate increase.

  4. Some interesting comments on how the faculty are responding: http://whithertheuofa.blogspot.com/