University Affairs Blog
As of August 31, 2011 the University of Saskatchewan will be moving away from the Canadian copyright licensing agency known as Access Copyright. For years Access Copyright has provided the university with a vast array of copyright licensing for a nominal fee. However, last summer Access Copyright proposed a 1300% increase in its basic charge, an amount that works out to be $45 per university student. This proposal was of great concern to the university’s Copyright Advisory Committee and obviously to the university itself who would have pony up an extra $700,000 or so should the tariff be ratified. This proposed increase not only caused a stir here at the U of S, but on many other Canadian campuses as well.
It quickly became clear that there were two main options with regards to dealing with Access Copyright. The first was to simply stay with the agency and see at what rate the tariff would be ratified at (Bill C-32 which is meant to amend the Copyright Act is still before a committee in the House of Commons and has implications for how high Access Copyright can set their tariff) then simply pay them whatever they ask. The second option was to sever ties to Access Copyright and get by using copyrighted materials already purchased through the library, open access materials and smaller individual licenses obtained directly from authors and rights holders.
After weighing the pros and cons and the feasibility of each the university decided to opt-out of Access Copyright in the early summer of 2011. The U of S joins other universities such as the University of Calgary, the University of Albert, Dalhousie and Queens just to name a few. In all 14 of the 25 biggest Canadian universities have opted-out of Access Copyright so far.
So what does this mean for students? Well first of all it is going to be much more difficult for professors to create course packs (those homemade textbook things printed on campus and sold at the bookstore). So what? Well this may cause professors to assign more textbooks for a class, which is a potentially steep (or more accurately, even steeper) cost to students. For the most part his move will affect professors and other faculty members the most as they will now have to scramble to find other ways of distributing their desired course material and be sure to track their usage of copyrighted materials very carefully.
Although this sounds like a terrible burden on the university it comes at a critical time. The world of academic materials is evolving into a more digitized environment. Open access and creative commons licensing as well as the power of the internet are drastically re-shaping how people find and share information, academic or not. A move away from Access Copyright pushes the U of S out into this brave new world where it can grow and evolve and learn to use technology more effectively for the benefit of its students.
