Evidence of meeting #112 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.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Just finishing up on this particular subject, because I've been asking some questions as well, what resources do you make available to faculty and staff and students to ensure compliance with copyright law? How do you assess the effectiveness of those resources?
We've heard some statements like “We put a poster beside the photocopy machine.” That's not quite it. We've heard there are some more elaborate processes and policies in place. What does the university do?
3:15 p.m.
Director and General Counsel, Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs, University of Manitoba
We have very robust copyright compliance. Yes, we do have our posters. We have three people on our copyright staff. We have Althea, who is our copyright strategy manager, as well as our copyright officer and our copyright coordinator. Our copyright coordinator's main role is to educate faculty and offer them review of course materials.
We provide advice online and in person on the phone to graduate students. We present to approximately 700 people per year. I've just created recently an online tutorial for faculty and staff, and it has seven modules that cover how to prepare and how to be copyright compliant. We have numerous policies in place: academic misconduct, responsible conduct of research. Most recently, a use of copyright-protected materials policy was approved by the audit and risk management committee.
I'm trying to think. We do audits periodically, and if we do see any issues with respect to those audits, we will recommend changes for transactional licences switching to licensed material. If I look at the entire university, people are dedicated to copyright compliance, including the bookstore and our libraries, and in extended ed we have five full-time equivalents dedicated to copyright compliance.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
3:15 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
You made an interesting comment, Ms. Andrew, about how one of the reasons you are no longer with Access Copyright, as in the company, as Mr. Sheehan said, was that there was a lot of duplication and you were already paying for the rights of many things that Access Copyright was providing. Can you explain how that happens? How is there duplication? It seems to me that somebody pays for the right to sell a published work. How is somebody else also available to pay that?
It seems there is only one owner, or one licence-holder, so how can you be accessing copyright-protected materials by paying one person but not actually paying somebody who also holds the licence for it?
3:20 p.m.
University Librarian, University of Manitoba
We'll see how we answer this. I hope this answers your question.
When we license material in the library, which is what she's referring to, we pay a licence fee to the publisher, who again, we assume, divvies it out appropriately. That is how we license material. Once it's licensed, we have the right to use it, and individuals use it. If we license five simultaneous users, five people can use it at the same time. If we license one, they take their turns.
The fee for use is already paid in that fee. When we were paying Access Copyright, of course you pay by head count, so in essence we've already paid the fee for most of that licensed material and, as you can see, the both our dollar value and the kinds of licences have expanded greatly, so the duplication would only be worse.
3:20 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Would you say that you're paying for copyright? Are you just bypassing Access Copyright and paying the publishers directly?
3:20 p.m.
University Librarian, University of Manitoba
That's the model that's there. Access Copyright is one mechanism. The other mechanism, of course, is for us to purchase licensed material from publishers, which we have always done.
3:20 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Are these publishers publishing works that Access Copyright was also selling to you?
3:20 p.m.
University Librarian, University of Manitoba
There can be multiple ways you can acquire a work or rights to use a work. Access Copyright is one.
3:20 p.m.
Copyright Strategy Manager, University of Manitoba
If I can add, I think part of the difference is whether we're looking at something that is born digital versus the print version, and we are increasingly purchasing those born-digital versions of things. I think that's where the difference is in who is getting paid.
3:20 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
I'd like to switch this over to Ms. Greenberg.
What is your response to that? When you're a publisher, do you work with Access Copyright? You seem to get some revenue from them.
3:20 p.m.
Editorial Director, Portage and Main Press, Association of Manitoba Book Publishers
I think most Canadian publishers do. I think their repertoire is from Canadian publishers, but I'm just mirroring what Pat said. We have gone, from 2013 to 2017, to 12.5% of what we got.
3:20 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
Are other publishers in your industry prospering right now because the universities are switching to them, or are all publishers currently hurting in the country?
3:20 p.m.
Editorial Director, Portage and Main Press, Association of Manitoba Book Publishers
I wish I could say that we are in the rooms and we are seeing people copying. We get anecdotal clues about what people are doing, and Wayne Antony, who is a publisher at Fernwood whose work is mostly post-secondary, sent me a note of his experience, which I'm going to share, if that's okay. It might shed some light on what is happening.
As you know, I think it's Universities Canada that put out a guide for copyright, and the ministers of education—I don't know the full acronym—also put out a book called Copyright Matters!, so I think a lot of educators are going with that, which basically says go for the 10% and don't worry about it.
This is from Wayne. He said:
A few days ago, we received a request for a desk copy of a book that will be released this spring. This is from a prof at Carleton U. She also sent her course outline with the request. The course outline (for a senior undergraduate course) shows no textbook but rather a list of book chapters and journal articles that will be posted for the course on the Carleton LMS. It included several chapters from Fernwood books, including 2 from a book yet to be published and 2 from a book recently published, and single chapters from other Fernwood books. We have had no request from Carleton for permission to reprint these chapters.
3:20 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
That's interesting.
I'm sorry to cut you off, but is it plausible that there are other publishers out there who are being paid, and maybe they're just not going through Access Copyright and you?
3:20 p.m.
Editorial Director, Portage and Main Press, Association of Manitoba Book Publishers
Possibly, but I would say before these.... I work mostly with the K-to-12. Before the modernization came, quite frequently we would get requests from teachers. We don't anymore. They don't ask anymore; they just interpret the Copyright Matters! booklet. We would get an email saying, “I would really like to use a chapter from this. What can you do?” and we'd arrange something. We get nothing like that anymore.
Michelle Peters, who is the AMBP executive director, may have something to add to that.
May 10th, 2018 / 3:20 p.m.
Michelle Peters Executive Director, Association of Manitoba Book Publishers
Yes, I just want to add quickly that all of our members have reported that their Access Copyright revenues are down. As well, direct copying requests are down.
3:20 p.m.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
The universities that contact you directly are also not doing that either.
3:20 p.m.
Executive Director, Association of Manitoba Book Publishers
That's down as well.
3:25 p.m.
Conservative
3:25 p.m.
Liberal
3:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Association of Manitoba Book Publishers
I'm Michelle Peters, Executive Director of the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers.
3:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Perfect. Thank you. That's just for the record.
We're going to move to Mr. Sheehan. You have five minutes.
3:25 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you very much.
My next question is going to be for Sherri Rollins.
I used to be a school board trustee many years ago. In Manitoba, how does the funding work? You referred to some of the funding being down for your libraries, for library services. Do you set a mill rate, or is it provincially driven?
3:25 p.m.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Winnipeg School Division
Thank you for asking that, because we still set the mill rate. We're one of the few provinces that still have the ability to set the mill rate.