Another open letter to the Bill C-11 committee
Dear Bill C11 committee members,
As the bill undergoes clause-by-clause review, subsections 30.02(6), (7) and (8) are now being publicly criticized by legal experts as a “copyright grab,” by the collecting agency Access Copyright, which effectively transfers to it “the copyright of the majority of Canadian and foreign authors.”
In the interests of innovation, competition, and constitutionality, these subsections must be rejected, for they allow Access Copyright – an agency that has consistently operated in bad faith with Canadian educators – “to override the copyrights of others, monopolize markets and collect a de facto ‘Education Tax’ [that] is inefficient, immoral, and likely unconstitutional.”
I urge you to strike these pernicious subections from the bill. See Professor Ariel Katz’s analysis, “Bill C-11 and the big Access Copyright grab,” at http://arielkatz.ca/archives/1347*
Thank you for considering these comments.
Dr. Mark A. McCutcheon
Assistant Professor of Literary Studies
Athabasca University
* Katz’s analysis of Access Copyright’s backdoor sneak into Bill C-11 is a MUST-READ for #cdnpse
