Post Tagged with: "access copyright"

Fair Access: Striking the Right Balance on Education and Copyright

Academic Matters, a semi-annual publication that explores issues related to higher education, has just published a pair of essays on education, fair dealing, copyright, and collective licensing. Roanie Levy, the Executive Director of Access Copyright, wrote an essay in support of the role of her copyright collective. I wrote the other essay, arguing that emerging forms of access for copyrighted works lessens the value of the Access Copyright licence.

The full piece – Fair Access: Striking the Right Balance on Education and Copyright – can be found here. I conclude that:

any [copyright law] review must account for the millions being paid by educational institutions for access and the modest interpretations of fair dealing law in Canada, which have resulted in copying guidelines that are still more restrictive than those found in some other countries. Indeed, a fair review of the current system reveals that the problem facing Access Copyright is not that copies are not valued, but rather that in light of new forms of access and the evolution of the law, its licence is no longer valuable.

January 22, 2016 — 2 comments — News

Laboratory by Derek Bruff (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ieiWeh

Access Copyright Demands Higher Royalties Due to Education Investment in Technology

When the Supreme Court of Canada issued its SODRAC v. CBC decision last fall, critics warned that the decision may be anti-technology. The majority of the court ruling included a paragraph in which it suggested that users that invest in new technologies may be required to share some of the benefits with copyright holders:

Where the user of one technology derives greater value from the use of reproductions of copyright protected work than another user using reproductions of the copyright protected work in a different technology, technological neutrality will imply that the copyright holder should be entitled to a larger royalty from the user who obtains such greater value. Simply put, it would not be technologically neutral to treat these two technologies as if they were deriving the same value from the reproductions.

The danger with the decision should be immediately obvious as it creates disincentives to invest in new technologies. I argued in a post on the decision:

January 19, 2016 — 1 comment — News

Assignments of copyrights photostat copies by mollyali (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/5JbsPE

Why The Copyright Board Decision Affirms Canadian Education’s Approach to Fair Dealing

The Copyright Board of Canada delivered a devastating defeat to Access Copyright on Friday, releasing its decision on a tariff for copying by employees of provincial governments. Yesterday’s post provided a detailed review of the decision, including the Board’s findings on the limits of Access Copyright’s repertoire, the scope of insubstantial copying, and the proper interpretation of fair dealing.

The decision focused on copying within provincial and territorial governments, but much of the analysis can be easily applied within an education context. Indeed, since the Supreme Court of Canada 2012 copyright decisions, there has been a very public battle over the validity of fair dealing guidelines that have been widely adopted by the Canadian education community. I’ve written several posts on the education consensus (here and here) and there are no shortage of the fair dealing guidelines readily available online.

May 26, 2015 — 2 comments — News

Copying will start. by Chris Campbell (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/2XWjMK

A Licence With Limited Value: Copyright Board Delivers Devastating Defeat to Access Copyright

The Copyright Board of Canada delivered a devastating defeat to Access Copyright on Friday, releasing its decision on a tariff for copying by employees of provincial governments. Access Copyright had initially sought $15 per employee for the period from 2005 – 2009 and $24 per employee for the period from 2010 – 2014. It later reduced its demands to $5.56 and $8.45. The board conducted a detailed review of the copying within government and the applicability of the Access Copyright licence. Its final decision gives Access Copyright pennies rather than dollars: 11.56 cents for 2005-2009 and 49.71 cents for 2010-2014.

The financial loss for Access Copyright in the case is obvious as it expected to earn millions from the tariff. With roughly 120,000 full time employees covered by the tariff, Access Copyright’s initial ask would have brought in $9 million in the first five years and another $14.4 million in the second five years for a total of almost $25 million (even its reduced ask envisioned nearly $9 million in revenues). Instead, the Board estimates that the total value of the tariff for the entire period will be $370,000, which is unlikely to cover Access Copyright’s legal and administrative costs (it also does not include revenues from the Province of Ontario, which struck an incredibly bad deal in 2011 by agreeing to pay $7.50 per year per employee).

May 25, 2015 — 8 comments — News

Should Universities Opt Out of Access Copyright? @HowardKnopf @RoanieLevy Debate by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/nvbkJN

Too Little, Too Late?: Access Copyright Finally Acknowledges the Reduced Value of Its Licence

Access Copyright announced a shift in its licensing approach for universities and colleges yesterday, unveiling what it described as “new market-focused services.” Access Copyright CEO Roanie Levy is quoted as saying “we recognize the advances many institutions have made on content dissemination and the centralized management of copyright. We hear you. We are changing.” Indeed, the copyright collective has changed its tune in some important ways.

Less than three years ago, Access Copyright believed that institutions simply could not opt-out of its licence, claiming that an opt-out would amount to “an absolute ban on all copying” since the only possible way to legally copy materials was to pay the collective. Over the past three years, Access Copyright has been proven wrong. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed all of its key legal arguments in a massive defeat, the government expanded fair dealing with the inclusion of education, universities opted-out of the Access Copyright licence in droves, and dozens adopted fair dealing policies that called into question whether there was much value in the licence at all.

While Access Copyright is still suing York University (more about that below), the collective appears to recognize that the education sector has alternatives, including the enormous expenditures on site licences, open access publishing, fair dealing, public domain works, and individual licences for works not otherwise available. In other words, Access Copyright is an option, not a requirement, and the collective must prove value that extends beyond extolling the size of its repertoire. Rather, it must demonstrate that it offers value for money in an environment where the Supreme Court has emphasized the importance of users’ rights and adopted a liberal, flexible approach to fair dealing.

December 10, 2014 — 11 comments — News