Michael Geist

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Educational Fair Dealing Policy Shows Why the Access Copyright Licence Provides Little Value

Last month, I reported that Association of Canadian Community Colleges had received a legal opinion concluding that the Access Copyright model licence had “little value” for educational institutions. The opinion recommended that ACCC members not sign the Access Copyright model licence and that those operating under the Access Copyright interim tariff cease to do so. While it did not receive much attention, the same counsel also provided a model fair dealing policy. The policy does an effective job of demonstrating why the Access Copyright licence provides very little value to education as fair dealing covers much of what the copyright collective currently offers educational users.

The core elements of the model fair dealing policy include the following:

1. Teachers, instructors, professors and staff members in non-profit educational institutions may communicate and reproduce, in paper or electronic form, short excerpts from a copyright-protected work for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire and parody.

2. Copying or communicating short excerpts from a copyright-protected work under this Fair Dealing Policy for the purpose of news reporting, criticism or review should mention the source and, if given in the source, the name of the author or creator of the work.

3. A single copy of a short excerpt from a copyright-protected work may be provided or communicated to each student enrolled in a class or course:
a. as a class handout
b. as a posting to a learning or course management system that is password â€¨protected or otherwise restricted to students of a school or post-secondary â€¨educational institution
c. as part of a course pack

4. A short excerpt means:
a. up to 10% of a copyright-protected work (including a literary work, musical score, sound recording, and an audiovisual work)
b. one chapter from a book
c. a single article from a periodical
d. an entire artistic work (including a painting, print, photograph, diagram, drawing, map, chart, and plan) from a copyright-protected work containing other artistic works
e. an entire newspaper article or page
f. an entire single poem or musical score from a copyright-protected work â€¨containing other poems or musical scores
g. an entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary or â€¨similar reference work

October 1, 2012 — 4 comments — News

CIRA’s Opportunity

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority released the results of its board of directors election yesterday and I was very pleased to be elected to the board with the largest number of votes of any candidate. I’m grateful to CIRA members for their support, particularly given the many excellent candidates who […]

September 28, 2012 — 10 comments — News

Copyright Lobby Demands Rollback of Recent Canadian Reforms in Secretive Trade Deal

More than ten years of contentious debate over Canadian copyright law appeared to come to a conclusion in late June when Bill C-11 passed its final legislative hurdle and received royal assent. Yet despite characterizing the bill as a “vital building block”, the copyright lobby that pressured the government to impose restrictive rules on digital locks and tougher penalties for copyright infringement is already demanding further reforms that include rolling back many key aspects of the original bill.

Unlike the last round of copyright reform that featured national consultations and open committee hearings, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes this time the lobby groups are hoping to use secretive trade negotiations to forge legislative change. Later this week, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an umbrella organization that represents movie, music, and software associations, will urge the U.S. government to pressure Canada to enact further reforms as part of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.

September 24, 2012 — 17 comments — Columns

Warman v. Fournier Copyright Case Appealed

An appeal has been filed in the Warman v. Fournier, a notable federal court copyright case that addressed liability for linking and insubstantial copying. I wrote about the earlier decision here.

September 24, 2012 — 1 comment — News

Setting the Stage for the Next Decade of Open Access

Ten years ago, sixteen experts from around the world gathered in Budapest, Hungary to discuss the how the Internet was changing the way researchers could disseminate their work. The group hatched a plan to “accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.”

Their basic idea was simple: the Internet could be used to freely distribute scholarly research so that anyone, anywhere could have access. Called “open access”, the authors of the first Budapest Open Access Initiative identified two ways to enhance public access to research.

September 21, 2012 — 3 comments — Columns