The Copyright Board of Canada last week approved an interim tariff applicable to the educational licence granted by Access Copyright, a not-for-profit organization that represents authors and publishers, to post-secondary educational institutions.  According to the Copyright Board, more consultation is necessary before it will approve Access Copyright’s new proposed fee structure (Macleans Oncampus), which will significantly increase the cost for educational institutions to use the licence.

The new fee structure has prompted considerable criticism from universities and provincial governments and marked another chapter in the long-standing fued between the collective and educational institutions.  The additional costs to educators of the new structure are so great that some licencees, like the University of Alberta, have announced that they will let their contract with Access Copyright expire and make other arrangements to obtain copies of course materials (see this article at Macleans Oncampus).

Michael Geist, perhaps one of the leading intellectual property law experts in Canada, wrote a fascinating article on the implications of Access Copyright’s conduct, which is available on his blog here (scroll down for more links to get a better sense of the background, and you can find a previous post on mine of the subject here).  The basic idea behind Access Copyright and the photocopying licence for post-secondary educational institutions is that the creators of intellectual, intangible works should be compensated by the users or consumers of those works, which in this case are students and more generally members of the education community.  The Copyright Act (Canada) (Department of Justice) requires collectives like Access Copyright to submit their tariffs (i.e. the fees charged to users) to the Copyright Board for approval.  In his article, Geist argues that the new fee structure is excessive, and he highlights alternatives for universities and writers to get their needs met.  

You can find more background information from Howard Knopf, who represents a party opposed to Access Copyright, and Access Copyright’s website.

This current dispute follows a series of legal proceedings related to these tariffs, most recently involving a decision (CanLII) of the Federal Court of Appeal several months ago, which explains many of the issues at stake.

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