FAIR ACCESS: Strikes the right balance on education and copyright - Academic Matters

"The role of copyright within the Canadian education system was once an issue of interest to a relatively small number of scholars, librarians, authors, and publishers. With limited means to copy and distribute educational materials, the primary battle was over payments for photocopies of works that were distributed to students. While there were always disputes over the amount of compensation and the scope of fair dealing, educational institutions ultimately paid Access Copyright (formerly Cancopy) millions of dollars ... For Access Copyright, the changing landscape has caused both the copyright collective and its customers to rethink the value of its licences. Access Copyright’s initial response was to adapt its photocopying licences to the digital world with new offerings that could better account for digital distribution. However, those proposed licences failed to recognize the alternative mechanisms available to educational institutions to ensure legal access to works. Rather than accounting for the diminishing value of the Access Copyright repertoire, the collective sought to dramatically increase the costs of the licence. Those early demands, which would have required educational institutions to shift millions of dollars from new acquisitions and database subscriptions to collective licensing fees, led to a re-evaluation of the necessity of Access Copyright throughout the Canadian educational community ... In light of alternative forms of access, the strong endorsement of fair dealing by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Government of Canada’s 2012 reforms that removed any lingering doubts about the application of fair dealing to all educational activities, the higher education community shifted en masse away from Access Copyright. The emerging alternative model provides access in several ways ..."