Thank you.
I am the author of a book about earthquakes published by HarperCollins. I have written for Reader's Digest, Equinox, Vancouver Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. I've made documentaries for CBC, CTV, Global, Discovery, etc. I'm also a member of the Federation of BC Writers, the Writers Guild of Canada, and the Writers' Union of Canada. I didn't realize I would actually have to do that, eating into my time.
My presentation is called “Stealing from Canada's Writers”.
When York University published guidelines in 2017 stating that the revised Copyright Act allowed their faculty and staff to copy up to 10% of a book without compensation, including entire chapters, poems, and articles, the Federal Court of Canada said, “no”. York's policy was struck down. Yet here we are, millions of stolen pages later, still fighting the fight, and still paying lawyers' fees. A cynic might think Canada's big universities and school boards are trying to bleed us writers dry.
The illegal copying of works created by Canadian writers is only the latest twist in the ongoing saga of digital piracy. Rent any DVD movie and you will see a short video warning against the theft of intellectual property. The writing, directing, acting, filming, and editing of a movie involves years of creative work. Illegal copying of the final product is a crime in both the United States and Canada. We've all seen the FBI logo and the caution so many times now that people tend to ignore it, but the tag line is clear: piracy is not a victimless crime.
So why are provincial governments and education administrators behaving like modern-day pirates? Why the attack on Canada's writers?
In British Columbia, the Ministry of Education recently joined Ontario and others in a lawsuit against Access Copyright, the agency that collects the royalties due to Canadian writers and publishers. The issue is the copying of millions of pages of non-fiction books, novels, poetry, and magazine articles for educational purposes under the guise of the fair use concept, which was rejected, shot down, in the case against York. As most of you know, the Copyright Act was reviewed and partially modernized in 2012. Somehow the definition of fair use got muddied or lost in translation.
How much of a book, article, or poem can be copied for free? Well, we obviously don't agree. The lack of clarity that came from the 2012 review fed the appetites of anti-copyright activists, who encouraged university and public school administrators to think that a “new” consensus had been reached. They argued that quick and easy public access to information was more important than intellectual property rights, and that it was more important for cash-starved school systems to get something for free than it was to pay the workers who had created the books and the poems and the articles. The argument is and always was bogus. It was the same empty-minded, moral sludge used previously to justify the wholesale downloading and theft of music and movies. Digital technology made it too easy to steal. So, what the heck, everybody else is doing it, so school boards and universities might as well get in on the looting, too, eh?
“Information wants to be free” came the cry of the ethically challenged. Yes, sure, free until it's your information that someone else wants to steal. Creativity is work. Books are the product of work, just like baking bread or building cars. You don't expect to get bread for free. You certainly don't expect to get a car for free. We all pay for the work of a teacher or a professor, so why should anyone expect a writer to work for free? Which brings us back to the current lawsuit. There never was a new consensus about what constitutes fair use. The court ruled clearly against York's libertarian twaddle. Yet for reasons that defy common sense, school administrators across the country chose to ignore that decision. They pounced on the so-called lack of clarity in defining fair use and decided they could stop paying to copy. The Association of Canadian Publishers reports that more than 600 million pages of published works have been copied for free by the education sector since 2013. But—hang on—the ruling against York has not been overturned. It is still the law of the land. Why would any clear-thinking school administrator or provincial government be pressing ahead with yet another lawsuit that uses faulty reasoning to get something for nothing at the expense of some of Canada's poorest-paid workers? It boggles the mind.
A few lucky writers in Canada also have jobs in universities or as school teachers and therefore have a foot in both camps, but most don't. Most writers have no sinecure, no reliable monthly paycheque, no job security, and no benefits. A recent survey of writers nationwide documented that 83% earn $15,000 or less per year from writing. In other words, writers in Canada earn significantly below the national median. If illegal copying of their work sounds like an unfair labour practice, you're right, it is.
I do realize and sympathize with the fact that years of budget cuts to education have caused schools and universities to look for some way to cut corners, but writers are not in a position to subsidize underfunded schools. You cannot cover a budget shortfall in public education by stealing from writers.
As a writer, my message to this committee is: please help us clarify fair use as quickly as possible. We can't afford to wait for a long, drawn-out deliberation. Canadian writers and publishers have been losing $30 million a year since 2013. That's a lot of unpaid rent, and unbought groceries, day care, prescription medicines, you name it. Writers are not rich people. This loss of income hurts. Stealing from writers is not fair use. Piracy is not a victimless crime.