Evidence of meeting #110 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was publishers.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
We may call them up to clarify.
My original question until you mentioned that was going to be similar to the question asked of the University of Guelph. Maybe we'll still go down that road. The legislation was passed in 2012. Your licence with Access Copyright expired in 2015. Were you there at the time, in 2015?
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
I was there when the licence expired. I've been at Ryerson since 2011.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Why did the university choose not to renew the licence with Access Copyright?
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
One of the reasons we didn't choose to do it was that we were looking at our increase. We had wanted to track our usage in terms of fair dealing and what we were using before we opted out, so we chose to sign a model licence in 2012. We looked at what we were using in e-reserve as sort of a snapshot—because we have quite a few courses in that system—and we found that only 10% of what we were making available was fair dealing, and 90% was either transactional licences, database material that we link to directly, Internet links, or open access material. So 90% of our content was electronic, and we felt that, with the Canadian laws as they stood, we were going to go ahead without a licence.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
It had nothing to do with any increase in price, adding of tariffs, or anything like that?
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
You're talking about an increase in price?
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Yes, were there other factors in play? We heard University of Guelph say that because—
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
Well, certainly, that had been the original situation. I think there was a feeling that it wasn't a good value for our students as it stood, and we certainly had students advocate for that.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Sorry, students were advocating that they didn't want this copyright? Oh, okay. How were they advocating?
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
They were expressing themselves to the president.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Was it in the form of student elections? Was it an election issue? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of it. Take me back to 2015 and what happened exactly. We've had representatives from other universities in here, and Copibec was with us yesterday. A number of those witnesses indicated that essentially there was an agreement in place back in 2011, during the original hearing, that everybody was going to stay with Access Copyright. I'm trying to get a sense of what changed from 2011 to 2015, and from then to today.
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
I really think it was that we tracked our use of the licences. Because fair dealing for education is actually in the Copyright Act, we felt that our decision was reasonable, and we decided to go outside of the collective licensing because it didn't seem to be a good value for us.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
That just happened because of the timing of the licence expiring in 2015. Okay.
If we could go to the UGC exemption that you mentioned, Mr. Thompson—the YouTube exemption—we're seeing a number of associations come forward and say the UGC exemption is problematic. YouTube and Google are essentially creating their own music platform. It's called YouTube review, or something. They're moving to their own music-playing platform. Does that essentially help mitigate some of the UGC exemption issues?
Chair, Artists and Lawyers for the Advancement of Creativity
My colleague Ms. Marian Hebb has joined me here, and she'll address that.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
Can you just rephrase that a little bit? The UGC exemption has opened up an enormous area in which people can base new works on existing works and use those new works in ways that are competitive with the existing works or priced equal to them. They can use them in different ways. It's very leading edge internationally, and it's an exception. Canada is the only country we're aware of that has done anything like that. It's considered quite extraordinary, internationally, to give such freedom to people to use other people's existing works, and it's causing problems.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
You're doing a great job buying us some time—I'm finding the name here. I'm supposed to stick to the notes my staff provide me, but I don't.
Part of the concern is that it was essentially put in place for the mash-ups and compositions that Mr. Thompson indicated. Are the changes to what YouTube is doing essentially making the YouTube exemption okay now, in your opinion?
Vice-Chair, Canadian Copyright Institute
It's making it okay for the people making the new works. It's not making it okay for the people who have written the original novel to which somebody else has written a sequel, or for songs that people have mashed into new songs that may have displaced or made a mockery of the original song.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
I'm sorry for my incoherence. It's YouTube Remix. Thank you to everybody who passed that on to me. I am done.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
We're going to move to Mr. Masse. You have seven minutes.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Just to follow up, they went to some of the other publishers and platforms for it.
Ms. Muller, one of the things you identified, and we've heard it from academic institutions as well, is that staff—professors, instructors, and so forth—are also the authors and creators. You mentioned that you don't have any idea what compensation they're getting. What amount does your own college compensate in that respect?
Chair, Copyright Interest Group, Heads of Libraries and Learning Resources, Colleges Ontario
Right now, I'm not involved with the intellectual property negotiations between authors and administration at the college, so I couldn't speak to that specifically. I do know that from the library perspective, if an author makes us aware that they're publishing, we purchase a copy for the library whether it's in e-form or print form, whatever the author prefers. We will keep it as part of our collection. The negotiation between the administration of the college in terms of whether the author has created their work as an employee of Seneca or as an independent author on their own time, with their own resources, would be completely different. I'm not advised on that.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
They're probably different. The thing is, we're still trying to figure this out. What's consistent about the testimony we've heard is that basically creators, one way or another, are not getting compensated. What I've heard so far in terms of Ottawa, Halifax, Montreal, and here in Toronto is that it seems to be one of the recurring themes.
It would just seem odd to me that universities and colleges wouldn't.... I don't know. Is it a free-for-all in terms of each creator, or do you purchase from their publishers? Is it a mixture of things? I'm just trying to figure it out exactly.
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
Can I comment on this? I'm from Ryerson.
Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Ryerson University
I actually consult with faculty members who are signing author agreements with journal publications. The majority of the material that we purchase is journals. We purchase in terms of serials; 78% of what we purchase in the library is journal material. When an academic author is signing with Elsevier or Taylor & Francis, they sign an exclusive licence to these journal publishers, and they receive no fees and no royalties for that use at all. Basically they're getting reputation but they are not getting any money. They work for free.