Copyright Law

Myths and Reality About Canadian Copyright Law, Fair Dealing and Educational Copying

Schools and universities are shifting to virtual resources – which include online E-reserves, E-Books, and other kinds of digital distribution. Collective (blanket) licensing, which for years has charged faculties for making analog reproductions of excerpts of revealed works to be used in published coursepacks, has declined in fee and value as education invests in digital licensing that gives more desirable get right of entry to and duplicate rights. To facilitate the shift that advantages all stakeholders, legal guidelines should reflect emerging practices wherein blanket licenses compete inside the marketplace with alternative licensing models.

One answer, represented by using Canada, is a mixture of broader copyright exceptions for using excerpts for educational functions combined with a shift in educational spending towards shopping for and licensing extra virtual works and virtual makes use of-of works. The result is that instructional spending on licensing in Canada has multiplied with exceptions and licenses co-existing in a manner that provides appropriate reimbursement for authors and publishers along with accelerated entry to and versatility for academic uses.

Reality: Several Canadian publishers emphasized fair dealing and the decline in copyright collective sales of their submissions at some point of the Canadian copyright assessment, but the numbers were relatively small within the context of ordinary revenues. For example, Broadview Press indicated that its revenue from Access Copyright, the main Canadian reprographic copyright collective, dropped by means of C$30,000 (from C$50,000 to C$20,000), or just below 1 percent of general sales.[1] The effect on the House of Anansi turned even smaller. Its submission suggested that its annual sales are about C$7 million, with Access Copyright sales losing with the aid of about C$17,000 (from C$22,000 to C$five,500) or 0.2 according to the cent.[2]

Educational

Moreover, Statistics Canada facts confirm that Canadian publishers were largely unaffected with the aid of the 2012 reforms. According to Statistics Canada information released in March 2018, Canadian writer working profit margin has multiplied since the copyright reforms in 2012 as it stood at 9.4 percent in 2012, nine.6 according to cent in 2014, and 10.2 in keeping with cent in 2016.[3] As for the education publishing market, the facts suggest sales are increasing for instructional titles from Canadian publishers: C$376.6 million in 2014 to C$395.1 million in 2016.[4]

Reality: Access Copyright advised the Copyright Board of Canada in 2016 that the 2012 legislative adjustments merely reflected the regulation on time and did now not extend fair dealing. In a submission to the board, it said: “the entering pressure of the statutory modification in November 2012 did no longer serve to similarly expand truthful dealing due to the fact the Supreme Court of Canada had already interpreted the exception as inclusive of that purpose.”[5]

Reality: A closer observe the sources noted by using Access Copyright famous that the 600 million page parent overstates the effect of honest dealing while relying on information that almost totally pre-dates the 2012 Canadian copyright reforms. The majority of alleged copies (380 million copies) are taken from 14-yr antique copying survey data from 2005-6. The Copyright Board of Canada has cited that the facts are now ancient, warning both Access Copyright and college forums in 2016 that it cannot be representative.

[6] The final 220 million copies are derived from a examination conducted as part of the York University litigation that is presently earlier than the Federal Court of Appeal.[7] Some of the information dates back as an awful lot as thirteen years for published coursepacks that have dramatically declined in utilization. Not simplest is the facts old, but the 220 million discern represents a great extrapolation using Access Copyright from a single college to estimate copying for all universities and colleges throughout Canada many years later. Moreover, the numbers do now not account for copying covered by using opportunity website online licenses.

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