Copyright licensing changes could increase fees by over 1200 per cent

by on January 6, 2011 in News

VICTORIA MARTINEZ
News Editor

copyrightThe Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada is fighting changes to Access Copyright’s licensing system.

Access Copyright previously charged the University of Saskatchewan and post-secondary schools nationwide $3.38 per full time equivalent student for the right to copy materials for course packs and handouts. They have proposed upping that rate to $45 per full time student as of Jan. 1.

“It’s quite a jump,” said copyright coordinator Amanda Storey of the tariff proposal. “It most likely won’t be certified at such a high rate.”

The AUCC immediately protested the increased rate, and the proposal has not yet been certified by the copyright board. The certification could take as long as two years.

For now, an undisclosed interim tariff has been certified.

“The presumption is the interim tariff will look very much like what we’ve been working with the last 14 years,” Storey explained.

The proposed tariff would be valid for the next three years, though the U of S may choose to stop operation with the tariff at any time. In an announcement to faculty and staff, the university expressed it hopes to operate outside of such a tariff as of August of this year, which would mean eliminating dependence on Access Copyright materials — this could make creative commons licensed and open access materials much more vital to the school.

“We aren’t bound to them if the $45 per student fee were approved,” said Storey.

The previous U of S Access Copyright licence agreement expired on Dec. 31. That agreement allowed teachers to copy any published work that Access Copyright had not specifically banned. The new system would only cover works in the Access Copyright holdings, which should be in line with current U of S offerings.

Teachers who copy material will be required to record what is copied for use in a course pack, even for digital materials.

Teachers will continue to be able to use materials for individual copies and course packs at this time.

Limits on portions of works that may be copied remain the same and the tariff covers both digital and physical reproductions. The current $0.10 fee per copy of a page on course package materials will remain in place to offset the tariff.

Previously, the Access Copyright fees were paid from a central fund, and will continue to be under the interim tariff. There are no expected operational impacts for the interim fee.

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image: Danni Siemens


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  • Jonny

    This is really a shame that university does not want to pay the cretors and right holders. Creators and writers deseve better for their contribution.

    • http://library.uwinnipeg.ca Alex Homanchuk

      The University already pays rights holders in a variety of ways. For instance, e-journals accessed through your library are licensed from dozens of publishers and vendors, often as site licences based upon the institutions FTE (they pay a fee * # of full-time students per year). The previous AUCC/Access Copyright agreement only covered print copies, which has become less relevant as students and researchers increasingly use digital copies in their research (often, again licensed through the Library), and arguably much of what was 'covered' print-wise may be considered 'fair dealing' according to the criteria articulated by the Supreme Court in 2004. So why should the cost of the agreement go up by more than 1200%? (an increase that would no doubt be made up by additional student ancillary fees)

      Finally, "users" are creators. This is particularly true in academia where researchers create works that rely upon access to other's relevant research. Now again, since most of this material is already licensed through the Library access may be less of an issue, but is it reasonable to charge a second or third or fourth time to do some common task like displaying "[...] a Digital Copy on a computer or other device" as AC would like in it's digital licensing scheme? In this bleak future you're renting the text and paying for every use.

      Creating an imbalanced Copyright Act, that only takes into consideration "creators' rights" puts Canadian students, and researchers at risk of not having access to crucial knowledge.