Tag: access copyright

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

The Copyright Board painstakingly reviewed copy after copy to ensure that they were all fairly compensated. As had been readily apparent for years, the problem facing Access Copyright is not that copies are not valued, but rather that its licence is not valuable. The Board’s analysis makes it clear that the licence only applies in a tiny number of circumstances given a reasonable reading of fair dealing, insubstantial copying, alternative licensing, and a repertoire that has limits. It is a big loss for Access Copyright that foreshadows an even bigger loss when the education issues are resolved.

– Michael Geist

Source: A Licence With Limited Value: Copyright Board Delivers Devastating Defeat to Access Copyright – Michael Geist

So, it looks like Access Copyright was given a pretty thorough review by the Copyright Board of Canada, who basically decided:

  1. Access Copyright doesn’t have actual contracts with the vast majority of content producers, so their license isn’t that powerful.
  2. Most copying is only a page or 2 from a book, at most 10% of a work, which is considered “inconsequential” and doesn’t require licensing.
  3. Fair Dealing is valid. And, the Research clause is valid for non-personal research (when the research benefits others, rather than just the person doing the copying).

I’m not a lawyer, but to my layperson’s eyes, it looks like the post-secondary institutions “opting-out” of the Access Copyright protection racket seems to have been a rather important event in this story. I’m also guessing that Access Copyright isn’t about to roll over and play dead.

Michael Geist – Educational Fair Dealing Policy Shows Why the Access Copyright Licence Provides Little Value

via Michael Geist – Educational Fair Dealing Policy Shows Why the Access Copyright Licence Provides Little Value.

Comparing the scope of the copying rights under fair dealing and the Access Copyright licence provides a good sense of why the licence now provides little value. Note that before considering either fair dealing or the Access Copyright licence, educational institutions will first rely on hundreds of site licenses that grant access to millions of articles and other materials or on the millions of open access works that are freely available online. Moreover, in the case of K-12 schools, an Access Copyright backed study found that 88% of books and other printed materials are copied with permission and without the need for a fair dealing analysis or an Access Copyright licence.

He then compares Access Copyright with Fair Dealing over 5 issues relating to using copyrighted works. Access Copyright isn’t really necessary for most of them, and is redundant for many.

University of Calgary opts out of Access Copyright

The Provost announced today:

The University of Calgary has announced that they will not enter into an Access Copyright model licence but instead will manage copyright compliance and payments in-house.

The Copyright Office in Libraries and Cultural Resources has been expanded and new tracking software, Ares, has been purchased. Information Technologies is working closely with LCR to implement the software, integrate it with Blackboard and link it to other campus systems as required.. Library staff has begun working with the software which will later be rolled out to all members of the University community.

This is great news. The last public statement was that we were looking at tentatively signing up for a short term, to give us time to get our copyright house in order, before withdrawing. I’m glad to see we’ve stepped up to manage our own copyright licensing without paying into the protection racket that Access Copyright had become.

This means that we’ll have to be much more proactive and mindful about how we use copyrighted materials – but that’s a a good thing. Blindly using copyrighted materials because they’re covered by an expensive blanket license isn’t helpful. Let’s figure out how we can legally and morally use copyrighted materials – and more effectively share the resources that we create.

Michael Geist – Why the Supreme Court’s Copyright Decisions Eviscerate Access Copyright’s Business Model

The cumulative effect is clear: schools can rely more heavily on fair dealing for the copying that takes place on campus and in the classroom. This includes copies made by teachers for students for instructional purposes, copies that previously formed a core part of Access Copyright’s claim of the necessity of a license. Indeed, it will be very difficult for educational institutions to justify the Access Copyright license in light of this decision.

via Michael Geist – Why the Supreme Court’s Copyright Decisions Eviscerate Access Copyright’s Business Model. (emphasis mine)

I wonder how this will impact online use of copyrighted content. Fair dealing lets us use all kinds of content within the classroom, but gets messy when posting content online. Is the LMS just an extension of the physical classroom? How about a publicly visible site, such as a blog or wiki site used for a course?