Bill C-32: Reading between the lines

The spring election has killed Canada’s third attempt to change its copyright laws, but the legislation is likely to be re-introduced in the new parliament. Publishers are now taking issue with permissions that could be extended for educators.

Final committee meeting on Bill C-32 before the bill died.

One section of the bill extended fair dealings on copyrighted material to education. This would allow educators to use material legally without permission or payment to the copyright holder.

Currently schools and universities engage in collective licensing agreements that distribute payment to copyright holders. What many in the publishing industry fear is that if fair dealing is extended to education, the licensing agreements and the payments that come with them will begin to disappear.

Research, news reporting, private study, criticism and reviews are currently covered under fair dealing, and the proposal to extend this to education has many publishers and authors speaking against it.

The word "education"

Many people in the publishing industry have said the term education is far too broad and hard to define.

“Once you use a vague word like that, you open the door for anyone to say, ‘actually I have this fair dealing right because what I’m doing here is education,’ it doesn’t have to be professional education, it doesn’t have to be paid education,” said John Degen, Literature Officer for Ontario Arts Council.

Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair on Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, dismisses concerns over the broadness of the term education.

“Publishers said education is too uncertain and broadly defined. This makes no sense to me because under any definition, it’s clear that you would include universities, and secondary schools and K-12," says Geist. "Those are the groups that they say they are the most concerned with. It’s hard to envision any possible definition of education that would exclude the very groups they say they are concerned with."

Greg Nordal, CEO of Nelson Education, Canada’s largest education publisher, says the impact of the extension would hurt the industry financially and also lower the quality of textbooks in Canada.

“I certainly think you would see fewer authors willing to put the time and effort into creating customized materials for Canadian students to tell Canadian stories.

Not for copying text books

Roanie Levy, is the general counsel and director, Policy and External Affairs for Access Copyright, a Canadian agency that grants licenses to copyrighted works to users and distributes the payment to authors. She says education should only be included in fair dealing under exceptional circumstances, “If there’s a specific use that needs to be addressed by the education sector let’s put it in the act so everybody knows what were talking about."

"The bill is not intended perhaps for the copying of entire textbooks, but when copying happens in the education sector a little bit here, a little bit there, a page here a page there, a chapter here a chapter there, it does at the end of the day in the aggregate result in massive reproduction.”

Ramona Jennex, Minister of Education for Nova Scotia and Chair of The Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC) Copyright Consortium, spoke to the Commons committee considering Bill C-32 at its last sitting before the election call.

Professors often use course packs for student readings.

For the education community copyright reform law is not about getting material for free," she said. "The education sector currently pays hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase and license content such as textbooks, film, music and art. With Bill C-32, the sector will continue to pay hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Nordal sees things differently.

“I’ve heard the CMEC had said this is not about saving money, and if that’s true then simply imbed clear language in the next round of legislation that outlines that position and the industry would feel much more comfortable,” he says.

Passing the test

Two sets of tests, which were established by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004, currently protect copyright holders. Geist thinks that if fair dealing gets extended to education that this six-step test is sufficient to protect the copyright holder.

The best situation is where you have rules that provide sufficient certainty that people are less likely to go to court. Frankly I think copyright laws already provide that to a significant degree." says Geist.

Extending fair dealing to education, he says, is not likely to have a big impact.

"There is such a dramatic growth in the materials that are now readily available for teachers, students and others without the need for these additional licenses. That's changed far more than fair dealing.

Degen thinks changes to fair dealing could disrupt a harmonious relationship.

I think for the most part the front-line workers in both sectors, the teachers and the writers and the publishers get along and agree and understand each other's concerns very well says Degen. “I think the tension and the problems have been coming from a higher level, sort of organized advocacy from people who just think that the whole idea of collective licensing belongs in the past."

"We already have fair dealing covering private study and research; it already covers many activities that take place within education," says Geist. "This was evolutionary, not revolutionary."

Ask the experts! How do libraries cope with copyright laws?

We sat down with Pat Moore, head of systems at the Carleton University Library, to find out more about how copyright works for libraries. Here's a little Q&A...