I’m not a lawyer, nor am I an expert on copyright, but I do spend a fair amount of time reading Canada’s Copyright Act as well as the proposed changes to the Act (Bill C-32) in an attempt to make sense of the various claims being made by certain creators unions (i.e. – ACTRA, Writers Union of Canada). Though I have no doubt that those from within the unions (the “office staff” I mean, not the members), spend a great deal of time reading up on copyright issues themselves, I often ask myself: “Do they actually read the existing Act and proposed legislation itself? Or, do they read summaries written by other people who they trust?” Since most of us aren’t legal or copyright experts, I can easily envision a scenario in which a creative union’s elected representatives prefer a “fact sheet” as a “backgrounder” on the topic as opposed to hunkering down with the Act itself.
Up until now, I’ve been primarily focused on ACTRA’s approach to Copyright reform because I’m a member (who happens to be a copyright holder). I’ve posted a number of blogs detailing some of the false claims that the union has made publicly on behalf of its members. Now, I’m not a novelist and I don’t belong the the Writers’ Union of Canada, but the video below has some very well-known authors falling into the same trap that ACTRA had Eric Peterson, Wendy Crewson and Peter Keleghan take part in back in November 2010.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Writers’ video sounds an awful lot like ACTRA’s campaign: “Free Today: Gone Tomorrow”. ACTRA explains Bill C-32′s Fair Dealing expansion as follows:
Put the brakes on the fair dealing expansion
The Bill says any material used for education should be free, without defining ‘education’. Institutions pay the full cost of desks, computers and teacher salaries, why would they not pay for the content deemed valuable enough to use in their classrooms?
Compare ACTRA’s language with the language of Bill C-32:
Section 29 of the Act is replaced by the following:
29. Fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody or satire does not infringe copyright.
And, in an effort to be “fair and balanced”, let’s look at the existing Copyright Act:
Fair Dealing
29. Fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study does not infringe copyright.
Again, I’m not a lawyer or an expert, but it looks to me like Bill C-32 is proposing to expand the “Fair Dealing” provision by adding the categories of “education”, “parody” and “satire”. I don’t see any language offering up an artist’s work for free. It’s also worth noting that the “creative unions” aren’t taking umbrage with the “parody” or “satire” exemptions. I’ll take an educated guess here and say that it’s because such a move would enrage their memberships (who, at large, are obviously not reading the fine print).
So, how can the union reps lay claim to the notion that government is legislating away the right of an artist to make a living by giving their work away for free under the rubric of “education”? As Stephen Waddell, Executive Director of ACTRA states:
The Conservative government unabashedly states that extending fair dealing to education “will reduce administrative and financial costs for users of copyrighted materials that enrich the educational environment.” This is a clear acknowledgment that if this provision were to become law, an unspecified amount and type of reproduction of copyrighted materials for the purpose of “education” would indeed become free.
Before you take either the Harper government or ACTRA at face value, let’s look again at Bill C-32 on extending fair dealing to education:
Subsection 29.4(3) of the Act is replaced by the following:
(3) Except in the case of manual reproduction, the exemption from copyright infringement provided by subsections (1) and (2) does not apply if the work or other subject-matter is commercially available, within the meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition “commercially available” in section 2, in a medium that is appropriate for the purposes referred to in those subsections. (emphasis added)
Please, please, please do not mistake this blog post as an endorsement of Bill C-32. Quite the opposite, I abhor the Bill and think that it will indeed ruin many opportunities available to artists, but, as in previous blog posts, I’m saying that it’s important to understand when your rights are, in fact, protected.
Thanks for this. There are so many issues to have with what is actually in C-32 for Canadian creators (Especially the harm that will come from the TPMs provisions) that it is quite frustrating to see so much energy put into opposing a phantom that isn’t there.