Hill Times Letter: On the public part of the internet

Letter to the Hill Times Editor published October 31, 2005

Re: “Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada speaks up on new Copyright Act, says it’s standing up for students,” (The Hill Times, Oct. 24).

Where the Access Copyright proposal suggested that they should be able to collect a levy where there is no reasonable expectation of payment, the proposal from the educational community includes a request to not pay where there is a reasonable expectation of payment. I believe the government should reject both proposals and find an appropriate compromise.

I have been publishing online for nearly 15 years, and have thought about the question of what is implied when a work is published on the “public” part of the internet. Where there is no password of other technical method that verifies subscribers it is reasonable to expect that the copyright holder authorized publication under a minimum licence.

This implied licence is similar to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs licence. While non-commercial royalty-free distribution and copying is authorized, the source must be clearly attributed and no derivatives are allowed.

Educational institutions want an institutional exception that would allow derivatives without the required additional permission. Their proposal clearly indicates the desire to incorporate text or images in assignments, beyond what is covered in fair dealings, which is not something that can be reasonably expected.

This proposal is also harmful as it mis-educates students about how to work in an information economy, increasing the likelihood that they will infringe copyright outside of these institutions. It also fails to adequately recognize home-schooling, self-directed lifelong learning, and other critical forms of education that happen outside of large institutions.

An appropriate compromise between these extreme positions might include:

a) Recognize the right of educators and librarians to “step into the shoes” of their students or patrons. A teacher should be able to make multiple copies for classroom use of any material where the students could lawfully make personal copies.

b) Recognize “technical indicators of licenses” and “implied licenses.” Copyright holders and their audiences should not be forced to have expensive lawyers on retainer or read complex lawyer-friendly licence agreements in order to know what is reasonably expected of them. The technically-indicated implied licence of the “public” part of the internet should be recognized to be similar to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence.

c) Upgrade Canada’s “fair dealings” regime to a more robust “fair use” regime that clearly makes private and educational use unregulated by copyright. This should remove any claims of a need for institutional exceptions.

d) Launch initiatives to make more material available that is licensed for the type of reuse educators want. Open Access initiatives should be mandated by provincial Educational Ministers for educator created works, as well as publicly funded research. The federal government should abolish Crown copyright.

Russell McOrmond
Ottawa, Ont.
(The letter-writer is the webmaster for digital-copyright.ca)