Hello. Thank you for inviting me here today.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin nation.
My name is Kelsey Merkley. I'm here as a public citizen and a representative of Creative Commons Canada. We are part of a global non-profit organization established in 2001, with 26 country chapters worldwide, each working with artists, librarians, scientists, filmmakers and photographers. We create, maintain and promote the Creative Commons licence suite of globally recognized copyright licences that are free to use. They allow for creators to choose how their works are reused under simple standard terms.
Globally, the CC licences have been applied to over 1.4 billion works around the world. What's powerful to me about those 1.4 billion works is that individuals made an active decision to share 1.4 billion times. If you have used one of Wikipedia's 40 million articles, downloaded a photo from Flickr or watched videos on YouTube, you have come in contact with one of our licences in a commercial or non-commercial context.
Examples of our licences in the world include Lumen Learning, which permits commercial use under an open licence at over 280 institutions in the U.S. This year alone, they've had over four million visits per month to their open education content website. In multiple instances, Lumen has demonstrated that their supported OER, open educational resources, offering eliminates the performance gap between low socio-economic students and higher socio-economic students.
Here in Canada, the globally recognized leader in open textbooks, BCcampus, has saved economically stressed students in British Columbia over $9 million in textbook costs through Canadian-created open licence textbooks.
Canadian science fiction and young adult author Cory Doctorow chooses to license many of his works under a CC non-commercial licence that grants access to everyone as long as they don't sell his creativity. Researchers at MaRS in the Structural Genomics Consortium, Aled Edwards and Rachel Harding, have used the most open licence, CC By Attribution, to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by opening up their lab notes to other researchers around the world without restriction.
The New York Public Library, the Met, the Rijksmuseum and, most recently, Europeana, all share works under a Creative Commons licence to allow for their collections to travel globally.
We advocate and offer advice to governments and institutions that want to use open licences to help their citizens access content. We've offered advice to the European Space Agency, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission. All of them have used CC licences in their publicly funded works to benefit the public. Here in Canada, Quebec was the first government worldwide to adopt the CC 4.0 licence to all open data released by the province.
I'm grateful to the committee for the opportunity to offer a few thoughts and suggestions as you continue your review for potential changes to the Copyright Act.
First, the public domain is harmed by copyright term extension. Fundamentally, we believe that all creativity builds upon the past and that promoting and protecting a robust public domain are central to our mission. Why? Because works in the public domain may be used by anyone without restriction. Works in the public domain become the raw material for creativity and innovation. The committee should not reopen the terms discussed under the Copyright Act. If the term is to be extended 20 years, significant consideration should be given to other permitted uses and clearer fair dealing to mitigate its impact on education, creativity and innovation.
Second, permit creators to reclaim their rights. We endorse Bryan Adams' recommendation to this committee for Canadian creators to reclaim their rights from 25 years after death to 25 years after assignment.
Third, protect fair dealing, especially for education. Fair dealing for education is crucial to ensuring that copyright fulfills its ultimate purpose of promoting essential aspects of the public interest.
Fourth, the right to read should be the right to mine. Considering the massive potential for novel research discoveries, advancements in AI, machine learning and Canadian innovation, the Copyright Act should clarify that the right to read is the right to mine. It should ensure that all of these non-expressive/non-consumptive uses, like text and data mining, are included under the fair dealing framework or broadly supported under other legal measures.
Fifth, improve open access to government-funded education, research and data. The sharing of works under Creative Commons licences is a legitimate exercise of copyright and should be the norm for all publicly funded resources such as research, education materials, government-collected data and cultural works.
Canada should reform Crown copyright regime, because all Canadians should have the right to access and reuse, without restriction, work produced by their government. Canada should place these materials directly into the public domain at the time of publishing.
I hope your questions will allow me the opportunity to speak more to the public value and scientific opportunity of open access publishing.
Gratitude is at the centre of the work we do, so I'll end here with thanks to you for extending the invitation to hear from me today.