As an Ontario citizen, I wrote the following letter:
Dear Hon. Gerard Kennedy, Ontario Minister of Education
Copies to:
Kathleen O. Wynne, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education
David Orazietti, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education
Frank Klees, PC Critic, Education
Rosario Marchese, NDP Critic, Education and Training
Hon. Dalton McGuinty, member for Ottawa South (my riding) and Premier
There is considerable misinformation about the impact of proposed changes to federal copyright legislation on provincially administered education. Part of the problem is that the issues are complex, and there are a large number of changes being discussed, tabled and proposed at the same time.
I would like to offer myself as a private citizen who has spent considerable time investigating and analyzing these issues. While I am a young late-30's software and non-software literary author, I find that the greatest threat to my rights as an author comes not from copyright infringement, but from the lobbying against new creators by the incumbent content industry associations and business model representatives.
One important example is the debate between the Council of Ministers of Education and Access Copyright (and their educational publisher members) about the federal proposal to levy the public Internet. As a technical person who offers Internet consulting and publishing services to clients, I recognize that the Internet facilitates a full spectrum of creation, distribution and funding models. There are configurations of Internet tools that allow for private subscription-based services that are unique between a supplier and their customers. At the same time there are configurations where the audience is anonymous and a bare minimum of public access must be understood to have been authorized without further permission or payment.
Access Copyright is an administrative body for a narrow subset of royalty-based (also known as "monopoly rents") distribution and business models. They claim they are only trying to protect the choice of their member authors, but what they are really doing is revoking choice from authors. When an author publishes on the part of the Internet where audiences are anonymous they can not reasonably claim that the copyright holder can still expect or demand a royalty fee for access. Whether the audience for the material is part of the educational sector or any other sector should not matter.
There are many business models that authors use that allow the results of their work to be royalty-free (please ask as I can provide examples that are critical to the educational sector). If an agency like Access Copyright is able to levy the anonymous part of the Internet, then the incentives for these alternatives would be diminished. What Access Copyright is doing is trying to eradicate all competitive business model alternatives to their own. They want to ensure that it is only complex legal documents that can be used to declare something as royalty-free, and that these alternatives will have hire lawyers to argue their case in front of the Copyright Board. They want the less expensive and less complex methods used by their competitors to be ignored.
The problem with the response from the Council of Ministers is that they appear to be asking for something to be declared free (by the Federal Government) in a situation where a copyright holder legitimately expects further payment. The fact that it is not legitimate for the copyright holder to be expecting further payment is being ignored.
The rhetoric from the legacy industry associations is stronger than that of the Ministers, and if the current political tactic from the Ministers is continued it is highly likely that Access Copyright will win. The Ministers need to turn the tables on Access Copyright and make it clear that it is Access Copyright that is trying to illegitimately collect fees that is not due to them, and that the real problem is a lack of technical and other knowledge on the part of legacy Access Copyright members.
Access Copyright suffers from the problem that can be summed up this way: If you are a hammer, you see everything as if it were a nail and will fight to eradicate anything that isn't a nail. They have been very successful thus far with Federal Government policy makers who are "broadcasters" and suffer from the same narrow thinking as they seek to regulate new media which is not at all like broadcasting.
While this specific issue is not part of the current version of Bill C-60, there are still more issues within that will that will harm the educational and other sectors of our economy. Bill C-60 will benefit a small number of special interest groups, but for the vast majority of creators and the public it is bad legislation.
Additional articles that may provide more details:
- Access Copyright lobbies to deny creator choice.
- C-60 already represents a radical change for schools (as well as everyone else)
- Education ministers call on Ottawa to protect Internet access in classrooms
- C-60 already represents a radical change for schools (as well as everyone else)
Thank you, and I hope to speak to you or your staff soon.
Russell McOrmond
305 Southcrest Private,
Ottawa, ON
K1V 2B7
Consultant: http://flora.ca
Webmaster/activist: http://Digital-copyright.ca
Advisory Board member: http://www.forumonpublicdomain.ca/
Co-coordinator: http://GOSLINGCommunity.org
