Access Copyright and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada announced an agreement yesterday on a model licence. The deal calls for a royalty payment of $26 per full time student, below the $45 Access Copyright was seeking at the Copyright Board (and below the $27.50 in the Toronto/Western deal), but well above the current rates. While the agreement is just a model that leaves it to the individual universities to decide whether to sign, it is hard to imagine that AUCC did not obtain some support from its member institutions for it before reaching agreement.

It is difficult to provide detailed comments on the agreement since the text is not yet available and the $26 figure is not based on anything more than a negotiated figure reflecting what two parties anxious to settle were willing to pay or accept. The reality is that it is primarily a product of a broken Copyright Board model that incentivizes lofty demands that set the bar higher for either a negotiated settlement or a Board rate setting exercise. It is not based on the actual value of the repertoire nor on the copying on campuses that fall outside of fair dealing, public domain, or the myriad of alternate licenses that already grants compensated access to thousand of journals and books.

Read more ›