Source: https://fairduty.wordpress.com/tag/access-copyright/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:48:10+00:00

Document:
Howard Knopf (a prominent intellectual property lawyer and longstanding advocate for maintaining the limits upon copyright as prescribed by law) has drawn our attention to a new study commissioned by Access Copyright and carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The study concludes that the end is nigh for educational publishing in Canada. Which in turn shall impose great hardships upon Canadian authors and illustrators, and ultimately mark the end of Canadian culture. The root cause of these troubles, according to PwC’s assessment, is the advent of fair dealing upon the Canadian educational landscape. Because fair dealing is actually practiced now (with guidance from the Association of Universities and Colleges Canada (AUCC) and Colleges and Institutes Canada (CIC)), the publishing industry is denied its time-honoured income gained through blanket-licensing of written materials for education in Canada.
There was a time when I would direct students to PwC reports as exemplars of informed and dispassionate analysis. I am not sure I would do so today. With due respect to PwC, their knowledge of copyright in general (and fair dealing in particular) is scant. But even setting aside any lack of understanding of copyright, the spectacle of being a paid messenger to a biased cause does little credit to PwC.
And the message is this: Canadian educational publishers can maintain their industry only by returning to the level of payments received from schools and post-secondary institutions in the past. Educational institutions must continue spending as before, regardless of: (1) the position of the law, (2) the general decline of funding to education, (3) availability of alternative resources, or (4) better fiscal management on the part of educators and administrators. All of this is set upon a lament about the perils of coping with new technology.
Incidentally, that lament has been heard with every past introduction of a new medium. The script remains unchanged: that existing industries are threatened, they are endeavoring to cope with a strange new world, and if their demands are not met then culture and attendant jobs will go the way of the dodo bird. A modest historical exploration would confirm that the printing press did not end the creation of literature (or the art of calligraphy), musical composition did not stop because of the player piano, the film industry did not collapse with the arrival of the VCR (indeed, studios found new markets in the form of the home-movie-collection), and digital technology has strengthened the music industry today.
PwC is clearly aware of CCH Canadian (2004) but makes selective use of it. A complete reading of the decision would have alerted PwC that the current guidelines are structured along the terms of the Access Policy of the Great Library which allowed for copying of modest amounts of work (one case, one article etc.) with requests for greater copying to be further examined (2004 SCC 13, para 61.) In declaring such a system as fair dealing, our Supreme Court gave the blueprint for the fair dealing policies now followed across Canada. Moreover, further words from the Supreme Court established the viability of sheltering legitimately, unauthorized copying in educational institutions, as fair dealing (Education v Access, 2012 SCC 37).
It is disappointing to hear that Canadians (individuals or institutions) need to solicit input from others, before choosing to act under the law as it is sanctioned by our highest court.
Of course, Access Copyright may use this report as they see fit; Knopf muses that the report will be presented to the Copyright Board when the Board moves on Access Copyright’s requests for tariffs linked to educational copying. Knopf also reiterates his observation that the Board is taking a more inquisitorial role in its hearings.
No citation is given; there is no effort to indicate how much content is involved or how often these actions occur. In the early pages of a 95-page report, it sets a tone of rampant piracy; the statutory explanation of fair dealing is entirely absent. Granted, it is the interpretation of fair dealing that is being taken to task, but to refrain from even a cursory acknowledgement that Section 29 of the Copyright Act may very well shelter these actions (depending on the facts of each situation) is, at best, an error on the part of PwC. At worst, it is intentionally misleading.
… as noted by the [educational representatives], there was no evidence that this decline was linked to photocopying done by teachers. Moreover, [they] noted that there were several other factors that were likely to have contributed to the decline in sales, such as the adoption of semester teaching, a decrease in registrations, the longer lifespan of textbooks, increased use of the Internet and other electronic tools, and more resource-based learning (2012 SCC 37, para.33).
As the market shifts away from the purchase of traditional paper-bound textbooks to the adoption of digital technology, the revenues of K-12 publishers and related creators have fallen dramatically. Total revenues generated in the K-12 Educational Publishing Market has declined by 40% since 2008 (p.4-5).
It is plausible that the collapse of global economies in 2009 also had some influence here. In any case, the K-12 educational body falls at the bottom of the funding totem pole. Transfers of taxpayer dollars flow from the federal government, through provincial and municipal governments before making their way to school boards and schools. And, unlike post-secondary institutions, tuition dollars are not a reliable component of school budgets. (Interestingly so, PwC observes a much smaller drop in revenues from the post-secondary sector; see p.12). In an era of cost-cutting and belt-tightening, it should come as no surprise that schools are spending less and looking for alternatives with respect to quality educational materials.
PwC acknowledges that some institutions are dealing directly with publishers for transactional licenses but observes (albeit upon incomplete data) that the transactional licensing income does not match the decline of the revenue received via Access Copyright (p.62). However, PwC neglects to point out that some publishers did not wish to do business with educational institutions. Writing in September 2013, Stephen Toope (then president of UBC) gave details of the $25 million spent at UBC in direct transactions with copyright holders and indicated that, in connection to coursepacks, some publishers/authors refused to enter into contract for a transactional license to use works.
It has come to our attention over the last year or two that some publishers and authors have decided not to grant any transactional clearances. This is unfortunate, as this restricts faculty and students from utilizing the materials produced by the affected publishers and authors and, it would seem, unnecessarily cuts-off a source of revenue for them. Nonetheless, this is the right of publishers and authors and, if they are not prepared to grant a transactional clearance, the material will not be used.
[We have] considered this issue in light of the economic theory of copyright protection and its counterbalance, the fair dealing exception… The theory is that, without proper regulation, prospective users could consume certain goods without paying for them (in other words, they could “free ride”), resulting in “market failure”. This failure is signified by a reduction in the economic incentives to develop new creative content (p.6).
However, this invocation of loaded vocabulary invites two comments. First, the pejorative emphasis upon free ride and market failure conceals the reality that good public policy will aid and abet free-riders, because it is better for society as a whole. (Health care, education and public parks all come to mind—each of these is sustained through taxpayers, with varying degrees of contributions, including the option of a zero contribution.) And second, PwC seems unaware that markets themselves are of variety and will not necessarily transact in dollars and cents. Exceptions to copyright have existed for as long as copyright itself. The “market” in which creativity thrives is one which acknowledges that some goods/services will be transacted, without awareness, and without conventional payment. This is not a failure of the market; quite the reverse. Payment is in kind. Creators of today were users of yesterday, and pay their debt to the future.
PwC has lent its voice to Access Copyright’s ongoing complaint that educational institutions now may enjoy for free, the modest discretionary copying that they once paid a license for. However, the real grievance for Canadian students, teachers and parents is that until now, educational institutions endorsed a system whereby fair dealing, a right given to Canadians by Parliament, was treated as a consumer item to be bought and paid for.
To PwC’s credit, it is upfront in stating the limitations of the report; that PwC does not verify the accuracy of the information provided to them. Readers may wish to pay close attention to the sources from which the report was compiled (p.96); there is a distinct lack of diversity in perspective.
If this report is offered to the Copyright Board, it will be of interest to hear the Board’s impressions.
On 22 May 2015 the Copyright Board released its decision concerning tariff rates for copying carried out in provincial and territorial governments (excluding that of the Province of Quebec). The rates set by the Board fell far short of what Access Copyright had requested; some commentaries indicate that the returns would not cover the costs of the tariff proceedings.
The Board came to its decision via a number of factors, including: (i) scrutinizing Access Copyright’s claim of the extent of both its repertoire and business relations; (ii) deferring appropriately to fair dealing, given the integral nature of the exception within the system of copyright; and (iii) being mindful that copyright only applies when a substantial part of a work has been reproduced.
For commentary, see Michael Geist (here and here), Howard Knopf (here and here), Bob Tarantino (here) and Bobby Glushko (here). To which I add my own. The decision underlines that institutional systems of fair dealing, which includes assessment of substantiality (the threshold of copyright), remain contextual affairs. This lesson is not transparently evident, but it is there.
In its discussion about substantiality, the Board concluded that: “… without the benefit of a qualitative analysis and without even knowing which portions of a work were copied, … 1 to 2 pages of a work [to a maximum of 2.5% of the entire work] are a reasonable approximation in establishing non-substantiality (para. 204).” This measure has been greeted with enthusiasm but it is imperative that educational institutions not sleep walk into creating a de facto ceiling to insubstantiality. It bears emphasizing that the Board has contextualized its own remarks; this measure is appropriate when little or no information is available about the copying.
In terms of institutional practices–where post-secondary communities have endeavoured to develop resources and engage personnel, all to assist faculty in their understanding of appropriate uses of copyrighted material–it is viable to apply a qualitative assessment and allow for the possibility of copying more.
In Intellectual Property (2011), David Vaver makes a valuable point in connection to assessment of substantiality: “One should first screen out what cannot in law be a substantial part. ‘Part’ means ‘portion’ not ‘particle.’ … Copying ten such particles is as inoffensive as copying one (p.182-183).” As is often quoted, but appears not to receive sufficient consideration, facts are not eligible for copyright. Furthermore, processes are unlikely to meet the threshold of originality to be granted copyright. (Arguably, it is ill-advised to be creative when teaching students a process.) It is then likely that in fields of natural science, life science, mathematics and computer science, the threshold of substantiality may be higher. Even in fields typically considered to be more creative, it remains possible that a taking of more than 2.5% will not contravene substantiality when the qualitative analysis is undertaken.
The Copyright Board’s statement should be read in the same spirit as the Fair Dealing Guidelines developed by the Association of Universities and Colleges Canada (AUCC) and Colleges and Institutes Canada (CIC). Those instructions are baselines supporting legitimate unauthorized copying and more copying is always a possibility when individuals are suitably informed, or have access to informed support. It is the combination of baseline rules and discretionary support that constitute an institutional practice of fair dealing.
It was the lack of a robust practice on the part of the provincial and territorial governments involved in the tariff negotiations that resulted in the Board’s scrupulous attention to every incident of copying in the evidentiary sample collected in agreement with Access Copyright and the governments (paras. 223-225).
[p]arties pleading fair dealing, and courts ultimately deciding those events, should exercise flexibility when interpreting fair dealing: raise factors germane to the case and assess evidence to support them. Whether there are six factors, seven factors, or four factors should not be the driving preoccupation … (para. 267 citing p. 197 of The Copyright Pentalogy).
A timely reminder as the post-secondary community moves forward with solidifying their institutional systems of fair dealing.
In his blog post of 14 March 2014, Michael Geist expertly discredits CCI’s interpretation of history and points out the emptiness of their not-so-veiled threats against the educational community. Readers who are tired of this subject (as I am) likely hoped that discussion of the paper would end. Regrettably, that did not happen; on 20 March 2014, Quill and Quire gave further support to the paper through an interview with Jaqueline Hushion (chair of CCI). Hushion voiced her disappointment that the paper has not received much attention from educational institutions, that efforts to “make positive, useful contact with any one or more of the three major education [organizations] in order to see if we could open a dialogue” were unsuccessful.
The premise of CCI’s paper, and Hushion’s interview, is that current challenges for the publishing sector of Canada began with the legislative expansion of fair dealing in 2012, and, Education v. Access Copyright (2012) – a Supreme Court decision that confirmed that some copying carried out in schools is fair dealing. (It must be emphasized that this decision was made without reliance upon the expanded ambit of fair dealing). According to CCI, these two factors: “… did not eliminate the need for collective licensing in educational institutions. Nor do they justify copying practices that will have a devastating impact on the market for published materials (p.2).” These two sentences invite exploration.
Access Copyright pointed out that textbook sales had shrunk over 30 percent in 20 years. However, as noted by the Coalition, there was no evidence that this decline was linked to photocopying done by teachers. Moreover, it noted there were several other factors that were likely to have contributed to the decline in sales, such as the adoption of semester teaching, a decrease in registrations, the longer lifespan of textbooks, increased use of the Internet and other electronic tools, and more resource-based learning (para. 33).
Returning to the first sentence–regarding the cause of the elimination of collective licensing–I agree. Neither the expansion of fair dealing nor the Supreme Court decision is responsible. That claim to fame, goes primarily to Access Copyright.
It was not that long ago when educational institutions were quite complacent about their licensing agreements with Access Copyright. As I described two years ago, the educational market became reserved for Access Copyright, with no real protest from institutions. A relatively inexpensive and easy-to-administer deal, coupled with seeming assurances of safety, made collective licensing an attractive proposition. And Canadian universities were extremely timid in their approach with fair dealing (as I noted a few weeks ago, even the CCH Canadian decision of 2004 did not bring forward pronounced engagement with fair dealing.) The heightened focus upon fair dealing came only after a startling move by Access Copyright.
Three and a half years later, many post-secondary institutions have carried out such self-assessment and are using their resources wisely. Students may receive instruction through licensed material (paid directly to the individual provider), open-access content, publicly available materials, and through use of all exceptions available to Canadians under the Copyright Act of Canada.
CCI’s stated disappointment at the lack of engagement from the educational community is not likely to bring about a thaw in relations. The community has simply run out of patience in the wake of threats, tariff applications, one lawsuit, and incessant attempts to rewrite history.
April 2013: Access Copyright announces legal action. Michael Geist responds with a detailed analysis of how ill-conceived the action is.
Also in September 2013, my take on the object of tension; namely the AUCC guidelines. It spanned two entries; see here and here.
December 2013: The Association of Canadian Publishers releases a Statement of Principles on Fair Dealing in Education.
February 2014: Howard Knopf provides clarification regarding ACP’s [Mis]Statement of Principles.
February 2014: Michael Geist reports that the Copyright Board has posed challenging questions to Access Copyright with respect to the proposed tariff. The Board also offered a much-needed reminder; as copyright does not apply to insubstantial amounts of copying, fair dealing addresses substantial copying.
Yesterday, the universities of Toronto and Western Ontario formally announced their ending of relations with Access Copyright; Michael Geist cannily summed up the proceedings as “confirming the obvious.” Access Copyright’s licensing model is unsuited to the evolving needs of academic institutions. But it would be wrong to conclude that academic institutions want to evade payment for copyrighted works; quite the contrary. It only means institutions are unwilling to pay twice over for works licensed through other means, and are less than willing to pay for reproductions that are available without cost for a variety of reasons including: open access, public availability, and fair dealing. Across Canada, academic institutions are making the best use of resources to the betterment of students, teachers, researchers etc. We should expect nothing less given the predominance of taxpayer funds that support institutions, not to mention the over and above costs passed on to students and their families.
I beg forgiveness for repeating, yet again, that current practices of fair dealing were shaped expressly by the edicts of the highest court of the land, over a period of ten years. The landmark decisions that speak directly to reproduction of works in educational institutions (CCH Canadian v. Law Society (2004), Access v. Education (2012), SOCAN v. Bell (2012), ESA v. SOCAN (2012)) predate the inclusion of “education” to fair dealing as amended through the Copyright Modernization Act (2012). See Notable Supreme Court Decisions for a summary of the decade.
The flexibility we enjoy today is not the result of an act of benevolence on the part of governments or courts—it is an acknowledgement that copyright holders were previously allowed to deny Canadians the full benefit of copyright’s system of limited rights and is a corrective to that unfortunate history. Access Copyright, perhaps unwittingly, confirms this with their view that fair dealing today replicates coverage within their previous licenses.
The blanket model licenses used in the past insinuated that fair dealing only existed in the presence of a general license. Educational institutions agreed to Access Copyright’s general prescription of fair dealing as a series of quantified measures, thereby removing any hint that fair dealing is a matter of individual context. Our educational institutions are now reclaiming the individuality of fair dealing on behalf of their communities. To which I must say: it is about time.
Posted shortly after the Supreme Court of Canada heard the “pentalogy” cases, Katz wrote: “The cases that the Court heard last week will determine whether CCH will be seen as an outlier in copyright jurisprudence or whether it created a necessary correction that brings fair dealing back to play the role it was always supposed to play.” As 2012 would bear out, the Court rose to the occasion and continued the task of bringing fair dealing back to its time-honoured role as a flexible limit upon the rights conferred through copyright.
Returning to the current news, to better understand the 20th century Access Copyright model of blanket licensing of educational materials, it is important to understand the history of Access Copyright itself. Two years ago I gave a brief talk on this matter for the British Columbia Library Association; my notes and references can be found through this post.
While institutions have become much better at providing copyright information, all too often the rationale for a “10%” rule is missing or limited to a citation of CCH Canadian. In yesterday’s announcements, both institutions spoke of educating their communities about copyright; the stories that make up fair dealing’s history, past and present, ought to be the starting point. Regulations and best practices take root more quickly if they are placed in context.
Canada’s writers and publishers take a stand against damaging interpretations of fair dealing by the education sector. Access Copyright is taking legal action—on three fronts. The actions focus on York University, ministries of education, school boards and post‐secondary institutions that copy—and promote the copying—of copyright‐protected materials without a licence.
The arbitrary and purely mathematical extent and systematic, recurring nature of the reproduction and dealing with copyright-protected works authorized and encouraged by such guidelines is not encompassed within the fair dealing exemption under the Copyright Act.
In any event, such guidelines, are incapable of any effective, reliable or consistent enforcement by the defendant. All such purported “fair dealing” limits have been and will be regularly exceeded by the acts of reproduction and authorized reproduction by the Educators and the defendant’s students.
To suggest that students regularly exceed the limits of fair dealing is an odd tactic. The majority of fair dealing’s purposes are tasks implicitly and explicitly carried out every day in the course of educating oneself. And fair dealing is at its strongest in the hands of an individual — far from the modest 10% allowance of a work permitted in the guidelines, entire works are conceivably eligible for reproduction when a student or researcher chooses to delve into a subject. And when operating with supplemental material, the Supreme Court decision of last summer offers teachers strong support for standing in the shoes of their students. Until further details of this case come to light, nothing more can be said about the merits (or lack thereof) of Access Copyright’s claim.
All that is evident now is Access Copyright’s willingness to distort the operation of copyright to give their grievance a greater sense of pathos: “It’s harmful to arbitrarily take materials for free, without permission, without respect or regard for the sustainability of content essential for students and teachers alike.” Fair dealing is precisely the taking of materials for free, without permission. It ensures that copyright does not devolve into an instrument of absolute control, with the concomitant loss of creativity that would follow. And to suggest that fair dealing is responsible for the lack of “sustainability of content essential for students and teachers alike” ignores the behaviour of the publishing sector itself.
Which leads me back to Kirtsaeng. Next time.
Update – April 11: Howard Knopf has all the initial documents, including Schedule B, available at Excess Copyright. But Schedule B only lists the works copied, no detail is provided as to what role those works played in the learning activity between the teachers and students. Without more information, it is not possible to judge whether copying the works was infringement or fair dealing.
I thought it time to catch up on Canadian copyright events and turned to Michael Geist. It was a pleasure to read that the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) has developed and distributed a well-balanced fair dealing policy.
On August 30, a fair dealing policy and an opinion letter from legal counsel were distributed to members. ACCC will hold copyright workshops this fall covering implementation of the fair dealing policy, the application of the July Supreme Court of Canada ruling on fair dealing, and the Copyright Modernization Act. Copyright Law for Education in 2012 workshops will be held in Toronto November 12; Halifax November 14; Ottawa November 26; Calgary November 29; and Vancouver December 6.
My only quibble with ACCC is their suggestion that, “The workshops will be of particular interest to directors of library services, copyright specialists and managers responsible for copyright compliance.” The principal audience should be “faculty.” Issues of copyright or fair dealing arise when materials are chosen and those decisions are made by individual teachers.
But before anyone rushes to evaluate fair dealing, Geist reminds us that universities and colleges have already licensed copious amounts of material for use by students. Add in the profusion of publicly available material via the Internet (which carry an implied license of use) and public domain materials (which are more easily accessible thanks again to the Internet) it could well be that decisions of fair dealing will not be as prevalent as we might believe now. That said, one aspect of instructional material needs a nuanced understanding of fair dealing and copyright.
Further reading of the comments to Geist’s post brings the elephant in the room into sharper focus: course packs. By their nature, course packs are an assemblage of individual copyrighted works where each individual work may well be a candidate for fair dealing. But to immediately decide that the pack as whole is fair dealing is too hasty an action. A reasonable point from where to begin discussion lies, as commentators observed, in consideration of the material – what purpose does it serve? Does it provide a core concept, or it is illustrative to that concept? Illustrative could mean emphasis of the concept, or setting context, or a rebuttal to the concept itself or … Again, the teacher is the one who will best understand why the material was chosen.
If the material is a core contribution to the course then ask, what was the nature of that work? A divisional line is often textbook v. journal. The journal publication may already be licensed by the institution. Or perhaps is an open-access journal? With textbooks, different questions arise. Is the textbook still on the market? If students could not purchase the work itself, an educational use of some of the work has heightened legitimacy – denying students the material serves no benefit to anyone. If it is currently available on the market, depending on the amount taken, perhaps this is where licensing is necessary. In which case, since textbooks have very visible copyright holders – publishers – negotiations are direct. Whatever fees are paid, they are not diluted by middle-men operations.
It will take a little time to gain some ease with newer business models to manage the distribution of copyrighted works. But balancing fairness to students and legitimate compensation to copyright holders has never been, nor will it ever be, easy.
Left unsaid is that the previous arrangement was set upon a much smaller base rate, $3.38 per full-time equivalent student. Also, the prior arrangement included royalty charges only when actual copying occurred. A reasonable condition — a customer pays only when something is actually bought. Now AC is set to receive a yearly windfall, regardless of whether all students’ education requires use of any kind of coursepack, digital or otherwise. It is conceivable that humanities, social sciences, and arts teachers utilize course packs for some courses, but it is inconceivable to assume that all have shunned textbooks for coursepacks. I remain skeptical that mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry have much use for coursepacks at all, particularly for the early years of undergraduate studies.
While AUCC is to be congratulated for striking a harder bargain than the Universities of Toronto and Western Ontario (their negotiators could only achieve a per full-time equivalent fee of $27.50) it is disappointing that the organization that claims to have “the voice of Canadian universities” settled on an agreement that is not in the best interests of Canadian university students. AUCC negotiated a fee that does not reflect actual consumption of copyrighted materials for each student, yet the fees will likely be paid for by all students. Paul Davidson, president of AUCC, indicates that the agreement provides “long-term certainty on price.” No doubt AC was happy to accommodate.
Update — April 17, 2012 — Michael Geist’s comments on the agreement.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.