Home » Organizations

Educational Community

The Educational community (Teachers, Schools, School boards, parents, students...)

Should we use other terms for copyright: authors rights? WorkRight?

In the November 22'nd issue of StraightGoods, author John Degen discussed a possible renaming of the term "copyright" to "WorkRight" as a transition to thinking of a creative work as an act. He was echoing Abraham Drassinower, Associate Professor and Chair in Legal, Ethical and Cultural Implications of Technological Innovation in the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, who suggested that, "Unauthorized publication is wrongful because it is compelled speech."

The concept of "unauthorized publication" relates to a work that was not yet published, and is very different than the concept of copyright infringement which nearly always relates to published works. While copyright infringement or exceptions to copyright are nothing like being compelled to speak, I find the idea of moving away from discussing creativity as a form of property to being tied to authorship to be a very useful one.

U Sask seeks alternatives for educational works: authors should too!

The following is my comment to an opinion piece in Straight Goods by John Degen.

There are many things in this opinion piece which are misleading or false. You need to understand what Access Copyright is in order to recognize them all.

Access Copyright is not a government agency or funding body, although it sometimes acts like one. It takes what appears like a “tax” on the money flowing through it to fund the Access Copyright Foundation, which is doing work far more appropriate for a government agency. If I were a member of Access Copyright having my money redirected this way, I would be quite offended.

Access Copyright is not a union representing a class of workers, even though people like Mr. Degen often try to confuse people into thinking it is.

The 2010 Dramatic Growth of Open Access

Heather Morrison, Doctoral Candidate at Simon Fraser University's School of Communication, has written an article describing the Dramatic Growth of Open Access in 2010.

With some Canadian post secondary schools questioning the value of blanket licensing from the legacy publishing industry offered by Access Copyright, 2011 may be a big year for Canadian growth in academic Open Access.

Putting fairness back into the fair dealings debate

One of the witnesses in front of the C-32 committee today will be Roanie Levy, General Counsel and Director, Policy and External Affairs, for Access Copyright. We have a pretty good idea what she will have to say today given she also has an opinion piece in this week's Hill Times.

It is a repeat of the false claim that adding the word "education" to the first step of the fair dealings evaluation will greatly harm the legitimate interests of creators.