Access Copyright has confirmed that schools from kindergarten to Grade 12 will be dropping its licence as of January 2013. The schools will presumably rely on fair dealing to cover copying that would have been subject to the licence.
Post Tagged with: "fair dealing"
CMEC Releases New Version of Copyright Matters!
The third edition of Copyright Matters!, a copyright guideline document for the Canadian education community backed by government ministers of education, school boards, and the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, has been released. This edition accounts for recent court and legislative changes, offering guidance that is far more consistent with the law […]
Canadian Broadcasters Seek Overhaul of Radio Copyright Fees Post-C-11 & Fair Dealing Decisions
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters has applied to the Copyright Board of Canada for a radical overhaul of the current fees paid by radio stations for commercial radio reproduction of music. The CAB argues that in light of copyright reforms in Bill C-11 and the Supreme Court of Canada’s rulings on fair dealing, there is no legal basis for several tariffs proposed by CMRRA-SODRAC (CSI), AVLA, and ACTRA and that the rate on earlier approved tariffs should be significantly reduced.
The CAB position on the impact of the law is that:
The result of the changes to the Copyright Act made by the Copyright Modernization Act, when combined with the fair dealing right as applied in ESA, is to eliminate or significantly reduce the liability of radio broadcasters for the reproductions made by them in the course of their broadcasting activities. Even the reproduction collectives agree that the legislative changes alone will eliminate most liability of radio broadcasters for reproductions of music.
AUCC Releases Model Fair Dealing Policy
Last week, I posted on the emerging consensus within the Canadian education on the scope of fair dealing. The AUCC has now become the last major educational association to adopt a fair dealing policy, which largely mirrors the approach of the ACCC and K-12 schools.
Fair Dealing Consensus Emerges Within Canadian Educational Community
Four months after the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark series of copyright decisions, a consensus on the scope of fair dealing has begun to emerge within the education community. While Access Copyright has been sending threatening letters to institutions that seek to rely on fair dealing with claims that the decisions are being misinterpreted, roughly similar policies have now been developed by K-12 school boards, community colleges, and universities that plainly reject the views of the copyright collective.
As discussed in my post on the ACCC fair dealing policy, the breadth of fair dealing raises obvious questions about the necessity of an Access Copyright licence. All educational institutions already spend millions on licensed materials. Indeed, the Access Copyright study on K-12 institutions found that 88% of copying was permitted without the need for either an Access Copyright licence or reliance on fair dealing. Given the scope of fair dealing as articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada, many are concluding that the Access Copyright licence offers little additional value to Canadian educational institutions.
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