Post Tagged with: "richards"

Margaret Atwood at Brattle Theatre (5/2/2014) by Brattle Theatre https://flic.kr/p/nva2iV (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Why Margaret Atwood is Right to Criticize Bill C-11 and What the Backlash Teaches About the Risks of Challenging Government Policy

Margaret Atwood, the famed Canadian author, has been the target of a predictable backlash for her comments criticizing Bill C-11. Her comments, which came in the aftermath of Senator David Adams Richards forceful denunciation of the bill on the Senate floor, describe the bill as “well meaning”, but express concern about the uncertainty over how it will be interpreted, the role of government officials in determining what counts as Canadian, and the secrecy associated with the CRTC. The reaction has led to columnists suggesting she’s speaking nonsense and one writer group calling her comments “misguided and uninformed”. Yet the reality is that Atwood’s comments are consistent with longstanding criticisms raised by many stakeholders. So why the backlash?

The Senate Bill C-10 Debate Concludes: “I Don’t Think This Bill Needs Amendments. It Needs a Stake Through the Heart.”

The Senate Bill C-10 debate wrapped up yesterday with several speeches and a vote to send the bill to committee for further study. Given that the Senate declined to approve summer hearings for the bill, the earliest possible time for the study to begin is the week of September 20th. If there is a late summer/early fall election as most observers expect, Bill C-10 will die. Without an election, Bill C-10 will be back for Senate hearings in the fall with many Senators emphasizing the need for a comprehensive study that features the myriad of perspectives that were excluded from the failed House review.

While the debate in the Senate was marked by consistent calls for more study (my recap of day one, day two), the final debate was punctuated by a powerful speech from Senator David Adams Richards. One of Canada’s leading authors, Senator Richards has won the Governor General’s Award for both fiction and non-fiction, the Giller Prize, and is a member of the Order of Canada. Senator Richards, appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau to the Senate in 2017, warns against government or cultural decision makers and the parallels to Bill C-10:

Dealing With the Access Copyright Opt-Out: The Rest of the Story

The Canadian Press ran a story last week on the transition away from Access Copyright at Canadian universities. The transition was always going to require an adjustment given the clear commitment at the universities to respect copyright and obtain permission where required (a process facing delays due to the Access Copyright’s opposition to transactional licences). The article includes a quote from Professor Jeremy Richards, a geology professor at the University of Alberta, who indicates that he had stopped handing out some materials out of copyright concerns.

After the article was published, I contacted Professor Richards to learn more about his experience. Professor Richards has featured several posts on Access Copyright on his blog that have been sharply critical of the lack of support from the University of Alberta for faculty in making the transition. It turns out he is supportive of opting-out of Access Copyright but rightly expects the university to provide support for faculty.