Monday, January 22, 2018

Slaw.ca Article on Access Copyright v. York University Fight

In 2017, York University lost a case in Federal Court of Canada in its legal dispute with the collective licensing agency Access Copyright.

Access Copyright had sued the school, alleging it had been improperly reproducing and authorizing the copying of protected works.

The University is appealing the decision.

Legal scholar John Willinsky posted an article on Slaw.ca over the weekend entitled Access Copyright v. York University, and the Friends of Intellectual Property.

In his article, Willinsky refers to a study he co-authored in 2013 that looked at course packs at Queen’s and Stanford University. The results are very interesting:
"... students were found to be paying unnecessarily for 45 percent of the items in the course-packs across the two universities. The overpayment differed by discipline, with the five course-packs in law having 73 percent of its items available to students without cost, while only 33 percent of the items in the 58 humanities course-packs were otherwise freely available to the students. The study suggests one basis for challenging the tariff rates, but I also think that the universities could do more at the same time to show themselves friendlier to intellectual property."

"... if faculty had students go through the library to find some of their readings, and turn to the web for readings that are publicly available, they would be doing far more to educate them about the prospects of a lifelong engagement with research and scholarship. This awareness and use seem like a good (and IP-friendly) thing for securing public support of universities and publishers into the future. At the same time, students can learn how these works 'live' within the critical context of journals, books, societies, and other organizations. The intellectual aspects of these properties are only enhanced by seeing them set amid related content, citations, and social media take-up. The students will also have a chance to learn about how their information rights to publicly supported research and scholarship are slowly increasing, while at the same time gaining much needed skills in at least one approach to finding credible information sources in a post-truth internet."
 Reaction to the 2017 Federal Court decision includes:

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posted by Michel-Adrien at 6:09 pm

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