Facebook page protests the #ACdeal, Canada’s university copyright disaster

A new Facebook page provides critical information, discussion, and networking on the ongoing situation between Access Copyright and Canada’s postsecondary institutions:

STOP the Canadian university copyright disaster NOW.

“Like” the page, post and discuss content, and share the link (since, so far, sharing links is still a free reference activity, not – as Access Copyright’s model license would have it – a chargeable copying activity).

http://on.fb.me/Jqzyru

As you may be aware, especially if you follow the lower-profile developments in copyright regulation, the copyright collecting society Access Copyright (AC) is pressuring Canadian universities and colleges to adopt a “model license” for blanket copyright clearance of photocopying on campus – but the license hurts students financially, flouts legal definitions of copying, and curtails academic freedom. And universities that don’t agree to this license face an even more punitive tariff instead.

If you haven’t been following this story, and you’re a #cdnpse student or employee, you have cause for serious concern. For a quick briefing about this crisis, see the links in this post at my #AthaU blog:

“What you need to know about the #ACdeal: seven short must-reads.”

If there’s one article that best summarizes the #ACdeal crisis, it’s the one by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT): “A bad deal: the AUCC/Access Copyright model license agreement.”

Who’s “speaking out” on copyright? “Canadian writers” — or Access Copyright?

I just got an e-mail forwarded from the Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC), which promotes a Youtube video about the new copyright Bill C-32, and includes a “petition”-style message for sending to MPs: a message that, like the video, speaks out against Bill C-32′s new fair dealing provisions for educators.

So as a Canadian educator, I am supposed to write to my MP and the government against C-32′s new fair-dealing exemption? See the vid for yourself. And, oh, by the way, watch for the positive mention of Access Copyright, about a minute and a half in:

Having watched the video, I am emphatically more inclined to agree with the shrewd critical comments posted to Youtube about it. And with the more extensive analysis given the video by one commentator, a Canadian novelist who is less than thrilled to have Access Copyright and TWUC “representing” him in this misleading way — Cory Doctorow makes the important but disturbing point that a message like this “uses lies to pit creators against schools.” For more skeptical critical analysis, Canadian copyright lawyer Howard Knopf has weighed in on this too, calling the video a piece of “orchestrated and inaccurate hysteria.”

The problem with C-32 is its protection of digital locks, not its new fair-dealing provisions: these actually represent a big gain for Canadian educational institutions (though still not on the order of what US educators can do under their fair-use laws). However, clearer and more flexible fair-dealing provisions for educators could well spell trouble for Access Copyright, which is, nevertheless, still doing its utmost to alienate Canadian PSE anyway.

Cross-posted from my AU Landing blog