CAUT | ACPPU
Canadian Association of University Teachers
| Copyright bill gives, takes away |
| (Friday, September 30, 2011)
- Amendments to the Copyright Act introduced into Parliament will both benefit and hinder the work of Canada’s university and college professors, researchers and librarians. “We are pleased that the Bill reflects the priorities of Canada’s academic and research community to expand fair dealing specifically for educational purposes,” says James Turk, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. “This represents a genuine effort to introduce balance into Canadian copyright law.” “At the same time we are disappointed that the legislation makes it illegal to circumvent digital locks, even for lawful reasons such as fair dealing,” Turk adds. Fair dealing is the right to copy works without permission or payment for a range of purposes. CAUT and its coalition allies have long advocated for the inclusion of education as one of those purposes. Fair dealing affirms, for example, the right of a teacher to show in class clips digitally edited from a DVD. The anti-circumvention provision would make the same act illegal by prohibiting the teacher’s initial creation of the clips. “The Bill is not the one we would have written, but with the exception of the digital locks provision, it contains the kind of necessary compromises we can live with,” says Turk. “It is mystifying why the government would proceed with anti-circumvention language that content providers don’t want and even the United States is turning away from.” The Canadian Association of University Teachers is the national voice of 66,000 academic and general staff at more than 120 universities and colleges across the country. |
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