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Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured

The University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA) has recently sent a letter to UofT’s Provost and Vice President questioning the decision to sign a license agreement with Access Copyright. UTFA’s letter raises many concerns that have already been shared on this blog and by others. UTFA asks the Provost to “clarify the Administration’s interpretation of the scope of fair dealing rights and any plans by your office to advocate publicly for an expansive interpretation of these rights in higher education in Canada. This might include, for instance, any plans you have to revisit the new contract in light of pending …

UofT Faculty Association Questions the Access Copyright Agreement Read more →

Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

One of the questions that troubles many Canadian universities who need to decide whether to accept Access Copyright offer-that-they-can’t-refuse is what will be the consequences of not signing the AUCC-brokered Model License. One fear, which I have addressed in an earlier post, concerns the risk of being liable for copyright infringement in case that some infringing copies would be made on campus. The other fear is the possibility that the Copyright Board will approve Access Copyright’s Proposed Tariff, and that upon its approval, would become mandatory and retroactive. The precise effect of an approved tariff is a novel question and …

Keep Calm, Opt Out, and Carry On Read more →

Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

On May 15, 2012 the University of British Columbia announced that it would not sign a license agreement with Access Copyright, and immediately was inducted into Canada’s Fair Dealing Hall of Fame. “We believe we are taking the bolder, more principled and sustainable option, which best serves the fundamental and long-term interests of our academic community”, said David H. Farrar, Provost and Vice President Academic (Vancouver) and Doug Owram, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Principal (Okanagan). Yes, you are. Universities who decided to sign a letter-of-intent to sign a license agreement with Access Copyright but have not yet signed the agreement …

Fair Dealing’s Halls of F/Sh/ame Read more →

Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

In April 2008, three publishers, Cambridge University Press, SAGE Publications, and Oxford University Press, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Georgia State University, alleging that GSU infringed their copyrights by allowing professors to upload excerpts from books onto the university’s electronic reserve system (ERes). The complaint alleged “systematic, widespread, and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works”, and argued that GSU “has facilitated, enabled, encouraged, and induced Georgia State professors to upload and post to these systems – and Georgia State students simultaneously to download, view, print, copy, and distribute – many, if not all, of …

The GSU Copyright Case: Some Canadian Perspectives Read more →

Blog, Copyright, Featured

Today is Israel’s Independence Day, and coincidentally, Consumers International published a report ranking countries according to how well their intellectual property laws serve the public. This year, Israel ranks #1. I’m usually skeptical about these types of rankings because the law is a very complex social phenomenon, but today I’ll stick to Independence Day’s celebratory mood. Still, I’m quite familiar with Israel’s IP laws, and how they compare to those of other countries such as Canada and the US, and I’m not surprised at all by the this report’s result: the public-interest orientation of IP law in Israel is deeply …

Israel Ranks #1 On How Well Its IP Laws Serve The Public: Happy Independence Day Read more →

Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

Michael Geist reports that the International Publishers Association threatens Canada with WTO complaint over Bill C-11. The threatening letter mentions the explicit inclusion of education in the fair dealing provision and a few additional minor exceptions. The publishers allege that the provisions violate the Three Step Test found in the Berne Convention and other treaties. These allegations are baseless. If there are provisions in Bill C-11 that are more suitable candidates for challenge are those that are designed to allow Access Copyright (which represents many of the publishers whose organization sent the letter) to appropriate to itself the copyrights of …

Berne, Fair Dealing, and other Red Herrings Read more →

Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

I suppose that I shouldn’t have been really surprised, but I am. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), which on its website calls itself The Voice of Canadian Universities, has just written to the Copyright Board that it withdraws its objection. Here’s what the AUCC writes (you can view the full letter here): On April 16, 2012 AUCC and Access Copyright agreed upon the terms of a model licence agreement which AUCC is recommending that its members outside Quebec enter into with Access Copyright. I enclosed a copy of the model licence agreement. The licence agreement that …

The Voice of Canadian Universities? Read more →

Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

Access Copyright and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) announced yesterday that they had negotiated a Model Licence that would allow universities to reproduce copyright protected materials in both print and digital formats. In a joint media release issued by Access Copyright and the AUCC, Paul Davidson, president of the AUCC, was quoted as saying “We believe that this negotiated agreement provides the best possible outcome for universities, their students and faculty.” Really, Mr. Davidson, Really? The Model License is quite similar to the unfortunate agreement that UofT and UWO signed a couple of months ago. Like …

The Best Possible Outcome for Universities, Really? Read more →

Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Featured

At the heart of last week’s antitrust lawsuit, which the US filed against Apple and a group of book publishers, was the publishers’ concern about Amazon’s discounted pricing for e-books. The complaint alleges that the publishers sought to move away from the wholesale pricing model, which allowed Amazon to buy ebooks and resell them at whatever price it chose, and institute an “agency model” instead, under which the publishers set the retail price and the retailer gets a commission. This is not the first time that book publishers are unhappy about discounting resellers and collude to adopt a different model. …

History Repeats: Publishers, Retailers, and Antitrust Read more →

Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers

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Earlier this week I participated in the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Symposium on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization. I was part of a panel devoted to various solutions to the problem. Here is my presentation.   The Orphans, the Market, and the Copyright Dogma At its core, copyright law is based on a very simple logic–market logic.  The law grants limited exclusive rights in creative works, with the expectation that such rights will then be voluntarily exchanged in a decentralized market place. Whether we believe that exchange will provide the financial incentives for creating the works in the …

The Orphans, the Market, and the Copyright Dogma: Berkeley Orphan Works and Mass Digitization Symposium Read more →