In class we’ve discussed course packs/copied educational materials and how it relates to fair use, so I thought this article about a proposed copyright fee for students in Canada would be of interest.
Access Copyright, a copyright licensing agency, has proposed the Access Copyright Post-Secondary Educational Institution Tariff. Basically, each student would have to pay a $45 dollar fee and would cover “all manner of copying by students and teachers, whether digital or print, video or audio, online or offline, coursepacks or class handouts, in the library or at home, in the classroom or e-learning”.
This proposal has not been well-received. Instead, many believe that Canada should change their fair dealings doctrine to mimic our fair use guidelines – at least when it comes to educational uses. However, we know from prior discussion that course packs are not necessarily protected by fair use in the US, either.
This would certainly be less expensive than the “copyright compliant” course packs NYU offers, which can cost up to $100 per course pack. Would you rather pay a modest fee to ensure your use is not infringing or count on falling back on fair use?
Check out the link for more info. It gets heated!http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/copyright+will+students+more+learning+materials/2904884/story.html
To be honest, I am so confused. So would we be paying less if 45 dollar fee? I thought that we would still need to pay the course packet price, and plus that pay another 45 dollar for the proposed tariff.
So wouldn’t it be a rise of educational fee for us? Or would we only need to pay 45 dollars flat? I always thought that the course packs are the fee for copying, which is charged by the copy center.
I think we talked about this in an earlier post, but the course packs we usually get from the place on LaGuardia or wherever are NOT certified to be copyright compliant. There is a service (that not many professors use) that guarantees copyright compliant course packs:
http://www.bookstores.nyu.edu/faculty.services/course.packs.html
So if we adopted something like this Canadian proposal, we would pay $45 more a year (I think it’s once a year?) to have unlimited copying, course packs, etc.