Dec 1, 2017
Canadian Teacher Associations Urge Members to Give Up Rights and Income
by John Degen
In the ongoing struggle to protect authors’ rights in Canada, an important win was secured when Quebec’s L’Université Laval was denied a stay of proceedings in a class action launched against it by Canadian writers and publishers through the province’s copyright licensing agency, Copibec. The lawsuit mirrors a recent case that saw English Canada’s Access Copyright sue Toronto’s York University over millions of pages of unlicensed photocopying the educational institution was trying, and failing, to claim as a “fair dealing” under copyright law. York experienced a humiliating loss in that case — as it should have — mainly because it failed to offer any convincing reason why it should be allowed to take for free that which requires payment under the law.
The inevitable result of York’s loss (they have filed an appeal, which I believe they will also lose) should be the bolstering and strengthening of the economic rights of Canada’s authors, many of whom actually work as faculty in schools, colleges and universities. By setting precedent requiring licensing for large-scale educational copying, these important legal challenges will also see the rightful return of tens of millions of dollars in royalties. That is earned income educational administrations have been diverting away from authors and publishers, including their own teachers.
As an industrial group, educational faculty who also write stand to gain, earn, and benefit from the reining in of free copying in schools. A win for Copibec will be a win for them, meaning money in the bank and stronger workplace rights. So what the heck is this tweet from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) urging their members to withdraw from the lawsuit, and willingly give up all that benefit?
Sadly, CAUT’s self-defeating advice to its members is not at all surprising. It shows just how completely mired in short-sighted cost-cutting the educational space in Canada has become. CAUT regularly engages in lobby activity aimed at weakening individual creator rights — the rights of its own members — in favour of monolithic institutional gain. For example, here’s a “public service announcement” they have asked faculty to deliver to their students, spreading agitprop misinformation (and typos) at the classroom level. The misleading PSA characterizes the current copyright fight in Canada as one between accessible education and “people who think you should pay more for textbooks,” and asks students to send their textbook receipts to their Members of Parliament.
For the record, this is not about the sticker price on textbooks, and never has been. What’s more, the unchecked and illegal growth of free copying, which CAUT’s pre-lesson speech aims to continue and expand, does not actually lower student educational costs. In the past five years with free copying rampant in schools those costs have sharply risen, despite administrations saving tens of millions of dollars by not paying authors. That is a situation those representing faculty interests should be fighting rather than enabling.
And it’s not just CAUT. Calls for teachers to opt-out of the Copibec class action were retweeted by university faculty associations in Manitoba and Ontario, and even by the CAAT, a full-on collective bargaining unit of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). I am struggling to understand why any labour protection organisation of any kind would baldly take the side of the employer in a legal dispute involving its members. And yet that is just what’s happening on copyright. It’s a dangerous mistake for these organisations, demonstrating exactly how students and teachers might be co-opted into any manner of administrative cost-savings proposal.
Thankfully, Canada’s courts and lawmakers have begun to see the catastrophic error of educational budget-makers overreaching on free copying. An expected Parliamentary review of the Copyright Act should go far in protecting the rights of Canada’s authors to be properly paid when our work is used in education. And Canada’s most creative teachers will be better protected as well. Maybe they should let their associations know that.
John Degen is a novelist and poet. He is Executive Director of The Writers’ Union of Canada, an organization representing more than 2,000 professional authors in Canada. He is also Chair of the International Authors Forum, which represents over 650,000 professional authors worldwide. Views expressed are his own.
Read John Degen’s most popular Medium article: 5 Seriously Dumb Myths About Copyright The Media Should Stop Repeating.
© John Degen, 2017
