The Federal Court of Appeal delivered its long-awaited decision the York University v. Access Copyright case yesterday, setting aside the lower court ruling that I had described as “a complete victory” for Access Copyright. The latest ruling will not leave York University and the education community completely happy given the court’s fair dealing analysis, but winning on the mandatory tariff issue removes both the threat of mandated payments to Access Copyright as well as the possibility of a copyright infringement lawsuit by the copyright collective. That represents an enormous win both for York and for a fair approach to copyright licensing that ensures users have licensing choice.
Post Tagged with: "access copyright"
Taking Value out of the Copyright Tariff Process: The Copyright Board’s Access Copyright Post-Secondary Tariff Decision
In March 2010, Access Copyright filed a tariff proposal with the Copyright Board to cover copying at post-secondary institutions in Canada. The proposed rate was $45 per year per university student and $35 per year per college student. The proposal represented a dramatic increase in the fees paid under the Access Copyright licence, which, when combined with Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence on fair dealing in the 2004 CCH decision and the growing investment in digital materials, sparked concern among the Canadian education community. In 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada re-emphasized the broad and liberal approach to fair dealing as user’s right and the government would expand the fair dealing purposes to explicitly include education.
The Access Copyright tariff proposal progressed slowly before the Copyright Board, but on Friday, more than nine years after it was first filed, the Board issued its ruling. It established a retroactive tariff for the years from 2011-2014 of $24.80 per university student ($9.54 for college students) and $14.31 per university student ($5.50 for college students) for the years 2015 to 2017. Access Copyright welcomed the decision, arguing that it outlined a reasonable framework for copying in post-secondary institutions.
Copyright and Culture: My Submission to the Canadian Heritage Committee Study on Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries
The Canadian Heritage committee study on remuneration models for artists and creative industries, which was launched to support the Industry committee’s copyright review, wrapped up earlier this month. I appeared before the committee in late November, where I focused on recent allegations regarding educational copying practices, reconciled the increased spending on licensing with claims of reduced revenues, and concluded by providing the committee with some recommendations for action. My formal submission to the committee has yet to be posted (the committee has been slow in posting submissions), but it expanded on that presentation by focusing first on the state of piracy in Canada, followed by an examination of three sectors: (i) educational copying; (ii) the music industry and the value gap; and (iii) film and television production in Canada. The full submission can be found here.
Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 10: Rejecting Access Copyright’s Demand to Force Its Licence on Canadian Education
My series on misleading on fair dealing concludes today with a post on Access Copyright’s demands for copyright reform. The copyright collective’s strategy is simply to force educational institutions to pay for its licence. It seeks to do so through two legal reforms: (i) restrict the use of fair dealing for education and (ii) massively increase the risk of liability through the imposition of statutory damages. The proposed reforms run directly counter to Canada’s longstanding commitment to balanced copyright, would reduce choice and innovation in licensing content online, and leave students and taxpayers facing risks of multi-million dollar liability that far exceeds the value of any copying.
This ten part series has addressed many of the misleading claims that have surfaced in recent months about fair dealing and copying practices in Canada:
Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 8: The Access Copyright Fight Against Transactional Licensing
The series on misleading on fair dealing continues with a post on transactional licensing and Access Copyright’s inexplicable opposition to a licensing system that currently generates millions of dollars in revenue for publishers and authors. Transactional licensing, which involves pay-per-use licences for specific uses not otherwise covered by institutional site licences, collective licences, or fair dealing, is widely used to ensure universities and colleges are compliant with copyright law (prior posts in the series include the legal effect of the 2012 reforms, the wildly exaggerated suggestion of 600 million uncompensated copies each year, the decline of books in coursepacks, the gradual abandonment of print coursepacks, the huge growth of e-book licensing, why site licences offer better value than the Access Copyright licence, my opening remarks to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage).
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