Over the past few weeks, a growing number of Canadian universities have announced plans to opt-out of the Access Copyright interim tariff effective September 1, 2011 (the University of Calgary’s Gauntlet has an excellent article on the issue). Those universities join many others that opted-out from the start of the year. While many universities are moving on to alternative licensing approaches, the universities and Access Copyright continue to battle over the prospect of transactional (or pay-per-use) licensing which the universities want and Access Copyright refuses to grant. The AUCC filed its response on the issue earlier this week, which included some notable correspondence between Access Copyright and academic publishers.
According to Access Copyright “it’s virtually impossible to ‘opt-out’ of the interim tariff. The only way an institution would be able to ‘opt-out’ would be an absolute ban on all copying.” This is simply false and it is stunning to see Access Copyright advise major publishers that that is the case (along with advice that publishers tell universities that the interim tariff is the only option – “take it or leave it”).
As the Copyright Board states:
An interim tariff does not force Institutions to pay royalties absent any evidence that they require a licence. A tariff applies only to those who need the licence; those who do not, need not pay. Under the general regime, which applies in this instance, users whose consumption patterns justify different rates remain free to secure, from Access or from others, transactional or other licences that will trump the tariff.
Many Canadian universities have determined that they do not need a licence since they can cover their campus copying through a combination of site licences, open access materials, open educational resources, fair dealing, and transactional licences (whether from Access Copyright, directly from publishers, or from other collectives such as the U.S. Copyright Clearance Center). The question for the large academic publishers is whether they want to pick a fight with their biggest customers and lose out on potential royalties by rejecting university efforts to pay for using their works.
It may not be nonsense. The failure to secure permission when needed would tip a university into the interim tariff. It isn’t an answer to say that publishers wouldn’t give permission or that it was taking too long. And claiming that anything not licensed is fair dealing won’t fly either. As for most publishers, they don’t have the resources to process permission requests, so there is no way they can manage the volumes that get routed through Access Copyright, which is a pre-clearance system.
Stated by others but concisely put
Good summary, it’s nice to see someone explain concisely what Access Copyright is not the only game in town. It’s also nice to hear about other licensing systems that universities have signed up for that work for them as well.
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Free is better
It’s time for the universities to just stop buying licenses. A couple years of no profit could force Access Copyright to disappear. At the very least it would send a strong message that it’s the consumer, not the seller, has all the leverage when the product is non-essential.
Here’s two words for Access Copyright… Creative Commons
@Bob
There are too many suppositions and possibilities in your “may not be nonsense” scenario for it to carry the appropriate weight. There is an implied “guilty until proven innocent” theme underlying your argument.
I am curious, is it just a small cadre or do all of the AC policy directorate view their “customers” in this light?
@oldguy
Please read what I actually wrote. I’m talking about how Copyright Board tariffs work. There are no implications connected with my argument because I’m not advancing an argument.
@Bob
I do read your postings, with interest. You frequently supply a cogent view from the other side. But not this time..
Supposition 1: “The failure to secure permission when needed would tip a university into the interim tariff.” You are assuming that there will be a “failure to obtain permission”. The very next sentence is a another supposition based on such a failure.
Supposition 2: “claiming that anything not licensed is fair dealing won’t fly”. You are assuming that claims involving fair dealing will be falsely raised.
Possibility: “most publishers, they don’t have the resources to process permission requests, so there is no way they can manage the volumes”. This is a possibility, but it shouldn’t be in this day and age.. If a publisher wishes to stay stuck in the 60’s in this age of computers, they have much bigger business side problems.
Your argument is encapsulated in your first sentence, “It may not be nonsense.”
@oldguy
There are no suppositions in what I said. Approximately 200 million pages are copied each year in universities under the AC licences. I think it’s impossible for all of that to be cleared directly. And I’m not assuming any false fair dealing claims, just saying that it isn’t a safety net.
@Bob
“Approximately 200 million pages are copied each year in universities under the AC licences. I think it’s impossible for all of that to be cleared directly.”
That number might sound big, until you realize that there are plenty of web sites that get more than that many “page loads” in a month. Handling “big numbers” efficiently is the primary strength of computerization/automation.
But even so, it isn’t the amount of “copies” that would be problematic to track, it’s the amount of unique source pages per institution. Can you quantize that?
Australia’s statutory Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)
seems to have no problems about providing “What the market wants – developing licences based on use”
http://www.copyright.com.au/Latest_News/What_the_market_wants_–_developing_licences_based_.aspx
AC needs to try harder
I have heard…
I know from my Canadian friends that the universities there are really very good and also the entry level is high , so whatever they intend to do with their licenses – important is they have a good fame and young people will chose them!
Man and Van