Over a dozen high-profile Canadian research universities have reportedly said that they will not renew their agreements with Access Copyright, a government-run non-profit that sells licences to its library of copyright-cleared content. The institutions include the University of Calgary, the University of British Columbia and York University.
The Canadian issue on licensing agreements is seen to be similar to that reported recently in the US. Professors and librarians in the US are awaiting a judge’s ruling on a copyright lawsuit by publishers against Georgia State University over its e-reserves practices.
The stated idea of the licences is to allow professors to include copyrighted works among their course materials without having to ask permission from copyright holders at every turn. Access Copyright is striving to more than double the fee for its ‘comprehensive licences’ from $18 to $45 per student. Moreover, with the company asking that it be allowed to survey its clients' private networks so as to ensure compliance, many universities have said that they would prefer to drop the clearinghouse licences and go it alone.
The Access Copyright issue and Georgia State lawsuit are unfolding in vastly different legal environments. Canadian copyright law does not include ‘fair use’ exemptions for teaching. Its ‘fair dealing’ exemptions provide no special dispensation for educators and only protect scholars who want to make copies for ‘private study.’
For the University of British Columbia, the fee hike being sought by Access Copyright would increase the university’s annual payment to the clearinghouse from $650,000 per year to $2 million, according to David H. Farrar, the provost there. The university also objected to Access Copyright’s proposal that it should be granted full access to the campus and its secure networks to survey the materials posted to course websites and elsewhere. This condition also drew the ire of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), which is concerned that such monitoring might compromise the privacy of the association’s members.
The University of British Columbia will be ending its deal with Access Copyright, effective Thursday. The task of clearing copyrights for course packs has been delegated to the campus bookstore, which binds and sells the packs. Faculty who want to post outside materials to course websites are urged to clear copyrights themselves.
Officials at Access Copyright say they do not think universities can clear all copyrights on their own.
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