Category: Stationers

By Posted on Posted in Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Stationers No Comments Tagged with ,

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away there was a country named Broadviewlandia. The name Broadviewlandia had been adopted to symbolize that country’s hopes for a new bright future, as Broadviewlandia was slowly emerging from several centuries of feudal social order. Like in many ex-feudal societies, very few books were written in Broadviewlandia and even fewer were published, and the ones that existed were limited, expansive, and beyond the reach of almost all Broadviewlanders.

By Posted on Posted in Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Stationers 3 Comments

On May 29, 2014 the Quill & Quire published an article with the sensational title “Why the loss of Access Copyright royalties could be devastating for educational publishers”, which advances the thesis and leads the reader to the supposedly inescapable conclusion that the decision of many educational institutions to sever their ties with Access Copyright has already wreaked havoc with publishers and will continue to be. This is a second of a series of posts in which why these thesis and conclusions do not hold up to scrutiny. Part 1 examined the main smoking gun in the Q&Q article, the claimed …

The Loss of Access Copyright Royalties and the Effect on Publishers: Sifting Fact from Fiction (Part 2) Read more »

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On May 29, 2014 the Quill & Quire published an article with the sensational title “Why the loss of Access Copyright royalties could be devastating for educational publishers”. Julie Baldassi, the Q&Q staff reporter who wrote the article, advances the thesis and leads the reader to the supposedly inescapable conclusion (despite occasionally inserting words such as “perhaps” or “could”) that the decision of many educational institutions to sever their ties with Access Copyright has already wreaked havoc with publishers and will continue to be. This is a first of a series of posts in which I examine that thesis and conclusions to …

The Loss of Access Copyright Royalties and the Effect on Publishers: Sifting Fact from Fiction (Part 1) Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, My Research, Stationers No Comments

The Competition Bureau announced today that it has signed a consent decree with the four major book publishers, which is expected to lower the price of ebooks in Canada. According to the Bureau’s media release, the agreement between the Bureau and Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster follows an 18-month investigation into the ebook industry in Canada.

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The Varsity last Monday published a story with the headline “Post-Access Copyright era off to a rocky start“, and the sub-headline “Professors confused, frustrated by new copyright rules”. Great headlines, for sure, but in reality, that’s probably an exaggeration. My impression, which I have confirmed with colleagues in the UofT library system and the Faculty Association, is that so far the transition to the post-Access Copyright era has actually been even smoother than expected.