Advocates debate paying for educational works in various digital formats

OTTAWA--At a copyright forum at the University of Ottawa Tuesday, advocates argued the question of whether students and universities should have to pay once or multiple times for the use of digital works in various formats. The forum, hosted by the by the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA), focused on the educational exception in the Conservative government’s copyright reform legislation, Bill C-32. The bill, now before a House of Commons committee, proposes to expand fair dealing to cover education. “I fear the educational system will use my material because now it’s fair. , I will have to go, after the fact … and challenge the institution, which costs a lot of money,” poet and novelist John Degen said. The fair dealing provisions in the Copyright Act create exceptions for private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting. Bill C-32 proposes adding new fair dealing exceptions for parody, satire and education. But rights holders say that expanding fair dealing to cover education will lead to lawsuits to determine whether the uses of their works are “fair.” Alain Pineau, national director of the CCA, said at the forum that expanding fair dealing will encourage rights holders to put digital locks on content to limit their uses. “If the system relies on litigation and throws the burden back onto the creator … it encourages creators to put locks on their content.” Degen said that, as a copyright holder, he is often accused of being preoccupied with outdated models and ignoring the digital future of content. “I scanned my first novel and made it into a free online download as an experiment. I want to move into the future digital world. I just don’t want to discard my rights along the way,” he said. Spencer Keys, government relations officer for the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), said the exceptions in Bill C-32 could improve students’ educational experiences. “For the CASA, it is about the flexibility of materials. If you receive an article from an database at your institution, there is a button right on the screen that allows you to save it as a PDF, and your institution is already paying subscription fee,” he said. “Access Copyright is proposing in its current tariff that printing this document, sending the link through email, or projecting content onto a wall, are uses that it should be able to receive compensation for.” Bill C-32 also proposes exceptions for format shifting (copying content from one medium to another) and time shifting (storing content for later use). It also proposes a so-called “YouTube exception” that permits users to remix and create user-generated content for non-commercial purposes. Critics of the bill point out that the proposal to create strict legal protections for digital locks on content and devices overrides the legislation’s exceptions. Keys said the exceptions in the bill facilitate the sharing of information at educational institutions. “The numerous exceptions that are noted are forms of format shifting. Use of a copyrighted work in a classroom setting being live-cast elsewhere seems very appropriate to me,” Keys said. “If you pay for it, you should be able to use it in a variety of ways. It is not about not paying, it’s about only paying once. It allows the copyrighted material, which you have already purchased access to, to work for you in a variety of ways,” Keys said. But creators should be compensated for the wider, digital distribution of their content, which can occur through format shifting, Degen said. “If we are talking about paying once for a whole range of formats, we have to talk about that price,” he said. “Mechanisms can be put in place so that content is available and so is compensation. But these types of models will not evolve if the rights are removed ,” Roanie Levy, general counsel for Canadian copyright licensing agency Access Copyright, said. “Fair dealing for education is this amorphous exemption because you can’t really see the parameters of it. No one really knows where it starts and where it ends,” Levy added in an interview. Levy said she worries that the expanded fair dealing exception will set a precedent in which creators are no longer paid for the distribution of their content. “When an exception is created, there is no foundation to request payment anymore. It removes the right for creators to claim fair access to their property.” Other concerns expressed at the forum surrounded the creation of digital “mashups,” where instructors combine lines from various e-books or content platforms into a single document. Rights owners say the mashups can cause the loss of attribution and make the trail back to the original creator difficult to follow. Degen and Levy said the example signals that users and educational institutions should be paying more for content because institutions are getting more from it while publishers and creators do the same amount of work. “From the student’s perspective, it’s free, but someone paid for it,” Levy said. Panel member J. Aidan O’Neill, an intellectual property lawyer with Fasken Martineau, said he does not see free access to material for educational purposes as expropriation. “Copyright is not only there for the sole benefit of the creator. It is also there to allow access to content that will form an educated public,” he said. “Bill C-32’s proposition to add education to the list of exceptions is not going to move mountains.” asmith@thewirereport.ca

Advocates debate paying for educational works in various digital formats

Broadcast | January 26, 2011

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