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Who Gets a Large Share of Access Copyright Education Licensing Revenues?: US Publishers Say They Do

As the Canadian education community continues to shift away from the Access Copyright licence, relying instead on a combination of site licenses for materials, open access, fair dealing, and individual transactional licences, U.S. publishers are now urging the U.S. government to pressure the Canadian government to take action. The IIPA, the leading U.S. copyright lobby group, filed its submission today as part of the Special 301 process, a U.S. review of foreign intellectual property laws.

This year’s IIPA submission devotes several paragraphs to educational licensing, lamenting the shift away from Access Copyright and claiming that it is U.S. publishers that are being hurt in the process. According to the IIPA:

as soon as the new Act came into force, virtually all K-12 school boards across Canada cancelled their licenses with Access Copyright. Anticipated 2013 annual licensing revenue of at least C$12 million to right holders and authors – much of it destined for U.S. publishers, which enjoy a large market share in the educational sector – evaporated.

The IIPA urges the U.S. government to “engage” with Canadian authorities in the hope that they will tell Canadian educational institutions to pay Access Copyright. While that isn’t likely to happen – the government rejected Access Copyright’s demands for limitations on the expansion of fair dealing – the IIPA submission is notable for the claim that a large share of the Access Copyright educational licensing revenue was headed not for Canadian authors and publishers, but rather to the United States.

10 Comments

  1. Who Gets a Large Share of Google Books Revenues?
    Or that doesn’t count cause it’s Google?

  2. Google books revenue
    If google is selling books, which is how it gets revenue from google books, then it is doing so as an ebook vendor, so the publishers and authors are getting just as much as they would from any other ebook vendor.

  3. Special 301
    Yeah, “Special 301”

    Known in some circles as “Countries the copyright cartels are annoyed with because those countries are forcing the cartels to evolve”

  4. HowardTheDuck says:

    Copyright profits depend heavily on international agreements. If there weren’t such agreements between Canada and the US, for example, it would creates a loophole and each country would mutually ignore the copyright restrictions of the other and copy with impunity (the horror!). Where’s the money in that? As such, international copyright demands a loss of sovereignty since it requires nothing less than uniform copyright laws for the whole planet. Hey, maybe we could get the UN to help enforce it. Heck, let’s just have one government for the whole world already. It’s not like absolute power corrupts absolutely or anything…

    I know what I consider more important. It’s not the one that puts copy-restriction before people, and it’s not the one where the US tells Canada what to do.

  5. Tim Cushing says:

    Did you catch this?
    The US publishers’ long complaint about Access Copyright and fair dealing exceptions (with no mention of the 1,300% rate increases that began the exodus of educational institutions) is published under this subheading:

    “The Piracy and Infringement Situation in Canada – Offline”

    It would appear that US publishers believe Canadian fair dealing exceptions are indistinguishable from copyright infringement.

  6. And its fine i thik
    If a country is trying to promote its publishers and authors in their own country than i do not think that any other government can stop them from doing that.
    Rent-Into

  7. Kevin E. Hayden says:

    Just business as usual for the US.
    It’s just business as usual for the US.
    They want more money, like always.
    At least now, maybe we can all see what they’re really up to with all their trade agreements like TPP and NAFTA. Their main export to other countries will be US laws, while the main import to the US from other countries will be money. It’s time to tell them they can keep their damned laws, and we’ll keep our money, thank you.

  8. Publisher, Pontifical Institute AC board member
    The money does not flow to the US. All the educational publishers employ Canadians and publish Canadian authors. And the money that Access Copyright pays to small Canadian publishers ( like us) is important for pur survival. Or does Professor Geist think that Canadian publishers are acceptable collateral damage ?

  9. Devil's Advocate says:

    @Bill Harnum:
    Hopefully, you’re not trying to make it as an author, considering the lack of reading skills you’ve just demonstrated.

  10. Golly, Bill!
    Don’t you know that Mike and all the little me-toos who comment here regard authors and publishers not just as collateral damage but as superfluous parasites whose existence is an affront? Get with the program – the name of the game here is “blame the authors”, and it really doesn’t matter what the question is. The answer is always: authors and publishers shouldn’t be paid.