The Few Try To Benefit From the Many

Howard Knopf, whom I met while in Ottawa to speak in front of the Copyright Board back a few years ago, writes about the most recent outrage of a copyright collective and their request for tariff proposal.

Access Copyright collective, "The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency" is proposing a $45 per year per post secondary (i.e. university) student, and $35/year for other students tariff on internet access based on their own (IMHO warped) view of what constitutes a copy in this internet connected digital age. This includes simply displaying a copy (presumably by looking at a web page via the student's web browser) or adding a link that points to a copy of a page that is published somewhere on the internet, (again presumably in an area that is otherwise publicly readable.)

In other words, these people want to collect a fee simply for the use of the internet!

One of the definitions of "Copy" that this collective wants to base its fees upon is "posting a link or hyperlink to a Digital Copy," which has absolutely nothing to do with "copying" in any sense, since creating a link to an object is not the same as actually copying the object. In fact it is more akin to adding the name of a book or paper to a list of references that were used in the preparation of a new work, a practice that is done in every mode of scientific and non-fiction literature and is the basis of such mundane items as the card catalog in your local library. Nobody has ever in the past asked the libraries to pay for the privilege of listing a book in its catalog, or a scientist for listing another paper in the bibliography or list of references.

Ludicrous!

The second of these "Copy/reproduction" methods, "displaying a Digital Copy on a computer or other device" is simply viewing something from the internet - a part of copyright called "incidental copying" which the Copyright Board has already ruled does not require payment, and that Bill C-32 (before the current house) enshrines in law as not requiring payment.
Even Worse than Ludicrous - this is IMHO highway robbery.

Combined, they attack the fundamentals of the internet, that of free and open access to information freely posted and presented by enlightened creators. Further, the collective completely ignores the fact that there might be either implied or real licensing of internet works that obviate such payments. Things like the Creative Commons licenses and for that matter fair dealing (in Canada, similar but not the same as fair use in the US) which includes educational uses.

More, this collective purports to represent enough "creators" that such a tariff should be collected by it (and presumably it alone) - and of course divvied up only between those who have registered with the collective (after the administrators get their cut - don't get me going on the inequity of the whole collective "business model") yet every single person who creates a blog post, comment, story, or posts a picture or video in fact should be taken into account and compensated - but of course you have to jump through their hoops first; hoops that have not yet been spelled out as to how to become one of the people who might benefit from this tariff.

Maybe we need to add some extra words to the Creative Commons licenses to the effect that anyone belonging to or is otherwise benefiting from such a collective tariff is specifically not allowed to access our works, ever!

richard

Tag: copyright collective licensing tariff student