A BLOG entry by Michael Geist notes that recent media articles about the CMEC conference on Bill C-60 includes comments from an Industry Canada official who provides assurance that "very little should change for schools under Bill C-60."
While Mr. Geist agrees, suggesting that "the fact that the bill does little for education and increasing access to knowledge is not a feature, but rather its most significant failing."
I disagree with both the Industry Canada official and Mr. Geist.
What we can all agree on is that the the Orwellian named "educational use of the Internet" isn't yet part of C-60. (For earlier analysis see: Excess Copyright? Towards a full spectrum of business models for published works). This is the scheme by incumbent copyright holders who, afraid of competition from alternative business models, are trying to impose their collective agencies and business models on the Internet. Their claim is that the law should ignore any implied authorization by copyright holders when they use specific methods of publication, and that legal language that only expensive lawyers can understand be the only method recognized to indicate choices made.
When a copyright holder authorizes their work to be published on the anonymous "no membership required" part of the Internet they are effectively authorizing non-commercial, royalty-free, verbatim distribution of their work similar to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives license (Details of what this means is being left to another article). If the copyright holder wishes to know who the audience is so that they can then charge them a royalty fee, they must configure their website to indicate this by requiring any one of a variety of authentication mechanisms.
Every medium has similar implied authorization. When a tangible book is published it is understood that the reader can read the book any number of times and in any order without further authorization or payment. It is understood to be entirely unreasonable for a copyright holder to expect further royalty fees from any reader, whether educational sector or otherwise. In fact, with books the act of reading is entirely unregulated by copyright, and the concept of pay-per-read is not supported either in the publication mechanism or under law.
It is equally unreasonable for any copyright holder to claim that they don't understand the choices that the Internet offers, and the correct way to indicate these choices, and claim a right to collect royalties from anonymous audience members. To allow them to claim ignorance opens up the ability of an unscrupulous copyright holder to entrap audience members or institutions like schools into paying fees that they have no ability to choose to avoid. This attempt by collective societies like Access Copyright to levy the anonymous part of the Internet is a direct assault against technically literate authors, audiences, and their ability to make independent choices.
While this proposal will cause great harm, this is not the only proposal that will harm the educational sector.
Bill C-60 contains legal protection for Technical Protection Measures (TPMs) such as access controls that falsely claim to protect copyright. These abuses of TPMs are often called Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). This is a contrast from the use of technology to track information about works under copyright or the users such as Rights Management Information (RMI) or other technology used by copyright holders for customer or content management.
While this is not the entire harm of C-60, it is an area that will harm schools.
The purpose of access control TPMs is to tie the ability to access digital material to the use of specifically branded tools which contain the "keys" to unlock and access the content.
Having school libraries forced to use branded DRM in inter-library loan (ILL) will affect schools. Cash-strapped schools may feel forced to use the same branded technologies for all digital loaning, imposing those brands on all patrons.
Having distance learning forced to use branded DRM will affect schools. Only those students who have purchased specific brands of technology will be able to participate in these distance classrooms.
Having all IT (Information Technology) brand choices and features for the schools imposed on them based on the decisions of DRM vendors (with the help of the duped educational publishing and other content industries) will affect schools.
This was simply an attempt by an Industry Canada official who wants to confuse the educational community into thinking that they don't need to participate in a strong opposition to Bill C-60.