Michael Geist

The Access Copyright tariff proposal that calls for a 1300% increase in fees to $45 per full-time student has generated some interesting discussion.  I noted in one of my responses that my courses only use openly accessible materials – court cases, statutes, government reports, and open access licenced articles.  This comes without any loss in the quality of materials and without the need for further payment or permissions.  I don’t think this is particuarly unusual for law, which relies heavily on these kinds of materials in addition to textbooks purchased by students and works in databases that are separately licenced.  The amount of additional copying in that environment that falls outside private study or research such that it requires a licence is tiny to non-existent.  Indeed, the inclusion of education as a fair dealing category would not change a great deal for thousands of Canadian law students.

While fairness dictates that Canadian education must object to the Access Copyright tariff proposal to ensure that students are not asked to pay for uses that the law says do not require compensation, it may be time for the post-secondary education community to ask whether it should walk away from Access Copyright altogether.  Note that I am not saying that creators should go uncompensated and that education should get a free ride.  I repeat that it is fair dealing, not free dealing. 

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