University Of Calgary Refusing To Pay Access Copyright Any More
from the breaking-out-of-the-stranglehold dept
We've written a bunch about Canadian copyright collecting society Access Copyright, which gets universities to pay up for a license to cover people photocopying educational material. The organization doesn't really distribute very much of its money to content creators and yet it's been seeking a massive 1,300% increase in fees -- and Access Copyright claims that even if professors just link to copyrighted content, they have to clear that through Access Copyright.Not everyone believes that's the case. The University of Calgary has said that the new fees are way too high, and it will no longer use Access Copyright at all. Instead, it will seek to clear any copyrights directly, when needed, or otherwise encourage professors to link to material online that students can use. It will be interesting to see if Access Copyright challenges the university for doing so. How much do you want to bet that Access Copyright will now be snooping around, looking for a professor who fails to properly clear a photocopy somewhere.
Update: Looks like York University is about to do the same thing.
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Filed Under: canada, copyright, university of calgary
Companies: access copyright
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Happening all over
Queen's: http://library.queensu.ca/copyright/teaching/queens#access
Waterloo: http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/copyright/update.html
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Re: Happening all over
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Re: Happening all over
Love when idiots like MAFIAA dig their own graves.
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Copyright scam artists.
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Re: Copyright scam artists.
FTFY
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Re: Copyright scam artists.
I think prayer has nothing to do with it. I don't think Access copyright is religious. Even if so, I don't think their prayers would be heard.
Their praying won't be heard for students and universities.
They're preying on the herd of students and universities.
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Re: Re: Copyright scam artists.
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Re: Re: Re: Copyright scam artists.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright scam artists.
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Finally!
Pretty soon, we will have such an outbreak of common sense and decency, we will not know where we are. Nah, can't happen.
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Re: Finally!
Don't be so sure. Firstly - although we continually complain that politicians are in the pay of the content industry - we may be subtly wrong. It is possible that they are scared of the content industry - because of course it includes the press - which has the power to break their careers.
However if the content industry becomes discredited this may change. Look at what has happened to Murdoch in the UK.
Politicians who used to turn up at his parties and accept his hospitality are now queueing up to slag him off. Even a few weeks ago nobody thought that that was possible - but now it has happened.
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HOW DARE THEY!
You wouldn't learn to read without paying us would you?
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Re: HOW DARE THEY!
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Re: Re: HOW DARE THEY!
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Re: Re: Re: HOW DARE THEY!
My bad is Reading not Read.
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Re: Re: Re: HOW DARE THEY!
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Re: Re: HOW DARE THEY!
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Re: HOW DARE THEY!
How dare they?
How dare you! You forgot to use the word 'freetards'.
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Re:
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They could use something akin to OSS Watch but for their educational material where they possible can.
They could also use material from others that are open like MIT OpenCourseWare
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Good thing the Spanish police investigated these scumbags and found out they were committing fraud to the tune of millions...
Sorry, I mis-read the article. This is about some university thing, not those Spanish guys who were basically doing the exact same thing.
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It's about time
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Re: It's about time
And quiet...
Ahhh... peace at last.
Maybe they should only collect royalties for Muzak?
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Re: It's about time
You want to get the RIAA to go away? Stop listening to the radio, stop listening to commercial music, stop watching TV, Movies, and anything else with related content on it. Stop it all. Don't visit any website that pays them. Don't consume the product at all ever.
I dare you to try. When you cut it all out, you will realize how much you value it. But I seriously dare you to try.
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Re: Re: It's about time
Happily for everyone, this is quite simply not true.
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Re: Re: It's about time
The point is that you are correct - that stuff has very little value and our societies would be much better off without an industry based on it.
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Re: Re: It's about time
Ah, we're back to you pretending that no good music can possibly be made without corporate shakedown and protection schemes. Do you roll dice to choose which tired talking points, proven incorrect on multiple prior occasions to focus on, or does the switch come naturally?
"Stop listening to the radio, stop listening to commercial music"
I did. The RIAA forced the services I was using to listen to independent music (Pandora, eMusic, AmieStreet) to either go out of business or stop servicing me. Now, I listen to more podcasts than music, although I certainly go non-RIAA whenever possible for the music I do listen to.
"stop watching TV, Movies, and anything else with related content on it."
Sadly, it's impossible to completely avoid RIAA content. My local bars usually have one of the MTV channels playing top 40 music in the background, for example. I can't change my social life completely just because some corporations annoy me with their actions. That doesn't mean they can force me to pay for their content directly, though.
"When you cut it all out, you will realize how much you value it."
Ah personal opinion masquerading as some kind of universal truth, again. Which number was that on your dice?
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Re: Re: It's about time
Once you stop feeding at the trough, you see what horrible things you've been subjecting yourself to.
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Re: Re: It's about time
The odd thing is that I still listen to (and buy) lots of great, new music. Exactly none of it comes from RIAA members, which has improved the quality of my music collection tremendously. A much wider variety of music of skill and polish that typically equals and often exceeds that of the RIAA crowd.
Also, I actually enjoy paying for the music this way (in the bad old days, I cringed at paying for it) because I get to pay the artists directly, and I know they are getting the rewards for their hard work. Not so much with RIAA and big labels.
So I agree with you, everyone should do as you suggest. They'll discover a world far richer and more wonderful than they thought possible.
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My money says...
I'm betting they pull and RIAA/MPAA and start bribin...erm...lobbying the government to make some sort of laws that will bascially require universities to pay Access Copyright for access to content.
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fairs fair
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Re: fairs fair
U of C will be clearing and paying for authored material; they're just not going to be paying a self imposed middleman.
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Re: fairs fair
Feel free to attend the classes for free.
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Re: fairs fair
> refusing to pay for authored material,
> they will take a generous line with students
> who refuse to pay for tuition?
So you actually believe that everyone in the world owes a fee everytime they link to something on the internet?
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Universities are to greedy
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Re: Universities are to greedy
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Re: Universities are to greedy
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Re: Universities are to greedy
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Universities are to greedy
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Universities are too greedy
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What an Example
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Re: What an Example
If I paid someone $20 bucks to mow my lawn, and the next summer they wanted to charge me $600, I think I'd probably consider mowing it myself.
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Re: What an Example
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Re: What an Example
> great example for the kids... if you
> don't agree, don't pay.
So you actually believe that everyone in the world owes a fee everytime they link to something on the internet?
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Re: What an Example
In all seriousness, that really is an important lesson to teach the students. The universities aren't witholding payment for services already given -- they're making a determination that those services cost more than they're worth and are therefore no longer using them.
Why is that a bad lesson? It's an important life skill that too many people don't have.
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To place the tuition comparison in it's proper light... if tuition increased 600% for complete courses but not for individual classes, then many students would stop taking full courses and sign up for individual classes instead. They would still be paying for the classes, just not the additional cost of the associated group heading.
Opting out of a service is not the same as refusing to pay for services rendered.
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Copyright abuse
If you have to get copyright clearance just to access copyrighted content you'd have to get clearance or have a license every time you access a Web site, open a book or watch anything on TV. I certainly don't see any way this would fly in the U.S.A.
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