Industry Committee on April 17th, 2018

[Paul Jones]

I will try to give an example, and it's an old example already. Let's say a professor is looking to present a class on the presentation of professors in popular culture or the presentation of politicians in popular culture, and they want to show some clips from a DVD or a video, or some kind of streaming mechanism. It may be that they have to break into that in order to copy those clips. Let's say it's a two-hour movie and they want to show two minutes of it. It may not even reach the threshold of fair dealing. It may be an insubstantial use, so it's perfectly legal to do that in terms of what the Copyright Act says, but because you're not allowed to break digital locks, it would be an infringing activity.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's a small segment, as you mentioned, and part of it's a practical application. It wouldn't be necessarily that the artists would have an objection to it. It would be the encumbrance to try to find the producer of the lock, the material, and so forth, in terms of trying to get that access. Is that correct?

[Paul Jones]

Yes, that's correct. I think one of the advantages of fair dealing is it allows quick and ready access to materials to present in the classroom.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes.

Mr. Gilbertson, in terms of fair dealing, what has changed? Give us a snapshot from a student's perspective in the last five years in terms in bookstores. There's a lot that's taken place in general. You mentioned something. I think it was the quote. I had to write it down because you said, “no longer see the value in”. I was going to say that I didn't see value in that in 1991 when one chapter was changed in a textbook, and you missed out on those who were selling them beforehand, and so forth.

Perhaps you can give us a little more insight into what's changed in the last five years.

[Shawn Gilbertson]

My understanding over the last half-decade or so is that we have seen a significant shift from traditional print-based products to born digital learning products tied to assessment. This is where we've seen the lion's share of investments from large multinational publishers. Certainly, we represent a specific digital intermediary channel where we've seen approximately $50 million since inception in total cumulative sales.

When this type of product is tied to assessment, students are essentially forced to pay. They don't necessarily have an option to share a book or to use a copy from the library, as an example. In the province of Ontario, we have seen some change in policy that allows the use of these particular products as long as institutions have clear guidelines or policies in place that protect student interests.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Has there been more of a movement towards maybe some more individual agreements with regard to the use of resources, materials, and so forth? Is that happening more often, or is it still a blanket policy? Do you now have different products in the university bookstores that might have more variance in independent decision about the usage policies?

[Shawn Gilbertson]

To answer your question simply, I'll just draw on a question from earlier this afternoon.

Cengage Learning just released a product that allows students to access the entire repertoire within their catalogue. That comes at a cost per term or per year. We are seeing some early signs of changes similar to other content industries where content is ubiquitous. Users pay a nominal price, and they get access to way more content than they otherwise would.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

We're going to move to Mr. Baylis. You have five minutes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

You both reflected back a similar point that was made by the previous witnesses, which is to leave fair dealings alone, recognizing at the same time that authors and small publishers are making less money.

Starting with you, Mr. Jones, you represent teachers. Some of them are the authors, let's say, and yet they're not unhappy with the fair dealings right now, if I understand. Is that correct?

Where's the flow of the money going? There's more and more money going somewhere, but it's not going to our creators, and it's not going to our small publishers.

[Paul Jones]

I heard that question earlier, and I thought about it. I have at least one answer, which is that $120 million per year goes to the CRKN, the Canada Research Knowledge Network. It is a consortium of universities that purchases a blanket licence to access digital material. Mostly, I think it is journal articles, but there are other things as well. That's an example of that shift to digital purchasing.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You mentioned this new movement towards open access, where authors are not putting it through a journal; they're putting it out there. Is that something that your association of teachers and professors is pushing? Can you elaborate on that aspect?

[Paul Jones]

This was a matter of some discussion within our membership. There wasn't unanimity at first, but a consensus has developed in support of open access. The genesis of it was a realization that our members, paid for by Canadian taxpayers, were producing vast amounts of literature, journal articles. They were transferring that to private sector publishers for free and often doing the editing and peer review work to ensure that it was up to scratch for free. Then, they were purchasing it back at the taxpayers' expense for huge amounts of money. Think of wage increases and inflation. The skyrocketing cost of these journals was just off the charts. Our folks have Ph.D.s, and there was a realization that maybe this wasn't the best way to go about this.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

So the model was that we do all the work, we write it, we publish it, we even edit it. We give it to you, and then you charge us back for it, and we don't make any money on it.

[Paul Jones]

Yes, and this light bulb came on.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

At first, they had that discussion in your group and they were not sure about this open access but then more and more people moved toward it because of this reality.

[Paul Jones]

Yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Gilbertson, you touched specifically on new ways. I think you talked about disruptive technologies and the way your students see value or don't see value.

Is this part of that movement? Are you seeing that? Is it flowing from the student's mindset about what's worth paying for or not?

[Shawn Gilbertson]

Yes, absolutely.

We're looking at some very new learning tools or technologies where students are paying out of pocket; they're nominal prices like, say, $20 per half credit, for example. One example that comes to mind is Learning Catalytics. It's similar to Cengage learning where the faculty member has access to the entire repertoire in the catalogue and students are paying $20 compared to a $200 textbook. I think this is where we are beginning to see the shifts in the way in which consumers or students value course material, and also, understanding that it is for a single half-credit course. Typically speaking, unless they are professionals, they tend not to hold on to them.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

We've seen similar movements, say, with music, where, at one point, the younger generation was saying they had no issue with getting it for free. Music revenue was dropping and things like Spotify came on. They've turned and now people are saying they're willing to pay this monthly fee because it's a reasonable charge.

Is that the same type of thing that we're going to see in the education system? Is it happening?

[Shawn Gilbertson]

Yes, we're right at that tip right now, I believe. I should also state—not necessarily for this committee, but certainly for Canadian Heritage—that we are concerned about some of the emerging models to protect student pocketbooks. One of them in particular is books and tuition, that being digital course material that may be charged an ancillary fee and where students don't have any option to go elsewhere to purchase that material.

There is some real concern that ultimately we might see that bundled with tuition, and then we start to think about all the other policy changes that would have to take place at the federal level to accompany that. That is a concern for us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Lloyd. You have three minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Jones and Mr. Gilbertson. Something that came out from the previous government in British Columbia was a little-known program called “creative commons”. Unfortunately I never really had the opportunity to access that, because it came online just as I was graduating.

I was wondering if you could comment on the role of creative commons within the greater copyright issue.

[Shawn Gilbertson]

British Columbia in particular has started making investments in open educational resources that are tied to creative commons licensing. We've seen other provinces, particularly Ontario more recently, which just came online with its open textbook catalogue.

As they started to target first- and second-year level high-enrolment courses, we have started to see a shift away from traditional proprietary resources in that regard, toward closed copyright.

[Paul Jones]

I have a newspaper article here. The headline says that B.C. is to lead Canada in offering students free, open textbooks. It heralds the program there to work on open education resources. The date, interestingly, is October 16, 2012, so we see things that have changed over the last five years, in this case in the growth of open education resources.

We also know that at individual universities, this has saved students hundreds of thousands of dollars. Overall, in British Columbia, they're thinking $4 million or $5 million in the last few years of having free, open, accessible, online textbooks replacing costly versions from private publishers.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Following up on this, how are the content creators compensated under the creative commons scheme? With the answer to that, is this a cost-effective way to provide resources to students but also to respect the rights of creators?