While at first blush Professors Waltner-Toews and Berezin appear to be commenting on copyright from opposite perspectives - Waltner-Toews expressing concern that creators of creative works should be suitably compensated while Berezin calling for a phase-out of copyright within the academic community - both are ultimately focusing on the same issue. That issue is how to develop an appropriate copyright balance that serves both the needs of creators and the broader public interest, including the education community.

The notion of balance is well known within the scientific world. Patents grant inventors exclusive monopolies on their inventions for a limited period of time. In return, the public receives access to the full inventions immediately and can freely use the patents upon their expiry. The same balance exists in copyright. Creators gain a basket of exclusive rights in their work for a limited time (although not quite as limited as patents) and in return the public benefits from both the creation of the work and from a series of user rights, including fair dealing for private study or research that enable it to freely use portions of the work without permission.

The danger with the Canadian Heritage committee's copyright reform proposal is that it dramatically alters this balance by granting creators significant new rights without adequately addressing the user side of the equation. In fact, the proposal will actually take away rights the education community already enjoys under current Canadian copyright law. It does this without regard for the source or type of work. All copyrighted work found online will be affected, whether a scientific journal article or a poem.

The issue here is not whether creators will be paid. Rather, it is whether they will be paid multiple times, often for work for which they neither expect nor are entitled to compensation. That certainly sounds like a cash grab to me.

Michael Geist
Canada Research Chair in Internet & E-Commerce Law, University of Ottawa