A change to copyright law affects student life significantly. From copying and sharing course material to paying for textbooks and course-packs, copyright tariffs and regulations have a strong bearing on the affordability and quality of higher education. However, while changes to copyright rules have occasionally attracted widespread attention such as Bill C-32, many students are unaware of proposed changes to the copyright rules governing post-secondary institutions.

Post-secondary institutions gain the rights to use and reproduce copyrighted material (works in the public domain and government publications are exempt) through two main processes: through specific agreements with publishers and through intermediary organizations that represent a number of publishers and authors.  In the past, post-secondary institutions in Canada have had an agreement with an intermediary organization Access Copyright (formerly CanCopy) which charged a per-student fee of $3.38 plus $0.10 per page of copied material. This past agreement governed only print materials, for example paper photocopies in course-packs, but not digital materials.

The agreement between universities and colleges and Access Copyright expired in 2010, and currently, Access Copyright is attempting to renegotiate its tariff with institutions. The proposed fee is a significant increase to $45.00 per student, with the elimination of the $0.10 per page charge.

Many institutions have declined to sign onto the new Access Copyright agreement, citing a preference to negotiate separate agreements with publishers. In some ways, this may be more effective as it will lead to more direct payment to the authors and publishers of works.  Currently, Access Copyright is using an interim tariff, while institutions and Access Copyright wait for the new tariff to be heard by the Copyright Board.

Changes to the rules governing copyright at post-secondary institutions are of significant importance to students for a number of reasons:

1) At many institutions, while specific agreements with publishers are paid for through the library budget, Access Copyright tariffs have been paid for exclusively through ancillary student fees. It is likely, then, that students will be asked to pay for an increase in Access Copyright tariffs through an increase in ancillary fees rather than the change being rolled into operating expenditures. This unfairly burdens students with the entire cost of copying agreements, when these agreements benefit not just students, but the institution as a whole. At most institutions, this fee increase will need to be approved by student governments, and many are rightfully concerned about the fairness of such a proposal.

2) Canadian copyright law has a "fair dealing" provision which means that copying a work for "private study, research, criticism or reporting" is exempt from copyright law. A 2004 Supreme Court ruling on copyright stated that there "must be given a large and liberal interpretation [of research] in order to ensure that users' rights are not unduly constrained", and "fair dealing" is not limited to private and non-commercial contexts. What this means is that a large amount of copying that occurs at post-secondary institutions is likely exempt from copyright payment under fair dealing provisions. Currently there are several cases before the Supreme Court that will further clarify the extent to which fair dealing applies to colleges and universities. Until the extent to which "fair dealing" applies to universities and colleges is decided, there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to what students should be paying for through their ancillary fees.

3) The proposed new Access Copyright agreement expands the breadth of copyright rules to the digital world, and is arguably more restrictive than current copyright law. For example, several activities currently allowed under Canadian copyright law fall under new regulation in the proposal, including transmission of a fax to a single recipient, the display of materials on an overhead or projector in the classroom, and the creation of a digital copy by libraries for individuals to use for private study and research, as well as the creation of hyperlinks. Canadian copyright law does not require compensation for these activities, making it difficult for students to accept the need for new regulation (and costs) associated with them.

4) There is no meaningful way of tracking digital copies under the current agreement, and proposed tracking mechanisms could result in privacy concerns, such as e-mail tracking. Until reporting issues can be resolved, and a clear means to distinguish between fair usage and copyrighted usage of digital copies is found, it is virtually impossible to charge a tariff truly reflective of the amount of copyrighted material being shared between and amongst stakeholders in higher education.

Undoubtedly it is important to ensure that creators and owners of materials are adequately compensated for their work. This happens in many ways, including institution-wide and individual negotiations for copying licenses as well as through negotiations with copyright collectives like Access Copyright. However, there are several issues under the current proposed Access Copyright tariff framework that are deeply concerning to students, including the scope of the tariff, difficulty distinguishing between fair dealing and copyright-governed use of materials, and an absence of realistic reporting mechanisms. As these proceedings move forward to the Copyright Board, students have an active role to play in working with institutions and publishers to ensure that these issues are resolved in a way that is fair to all parties involved.

-Laura Pin 

The month of July was a productive one, spent almost entirely on preparing for the coming fall. With the Ontario provincial election just weeks away now, the Home Office has been busy preparing our platform, website, videos, materials, polling and election workshop. I am becoming increasingly excited about the campaign, and I am confident that we have a plan in place that will both increase the student voter turnout and raise public awareness of post-secondary education.

I also had a number of meetings with government and stakeholders on a variety of issues that will likely dominate the agenda in the fall: tuition, ancillary fees, changes to the provincial funding formula, institutional accountability agreements, and the Ontario Online Institute.

I had the pleasure of attending the Canadian Alliance of Student Association's annual Policy and Strategy Conference, which had representation from our partner provincial groups in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI. It was a great opportunity to share information and best practices from across the country. We also decided to work together this year on a comparison of the provincial student aid systems, which should prove a valuable resource for all.

All is relatively quiet at Queen's Park these days - the calm before the storm, if you will. OUSA will be working hard over the next month to make sure we're prepared for both the election campaign and for working with the government on students' priorities.

So far, I've opened every single communiqué with some alarmed and clichéd statement on how the summer is proceeding all too quickly. I'm loath to do this again, but it's definitely how I'm feeling now that July is over. With August left to go, OUSA will be putting most of its energies into election readiness. I'm happy to be a part of this exciting time in our organization's history.

As far as July goes, it was quite a productive month. The Strategic Planning Conference yielded authors for all of our papers, as well as an ambitious set of policy objectives for the year. As the month progressed, we began adjusting and expanding the parameters of all these projects to better align them to the goals of our student leaders.

Work also continued on the Ontario Post-Secondary Student Survey, with the completion of a questionnaire that will encompass the broad topics of accessibility, affordability and quality. We will also be attempting to understand the demographic makeup of the Ontario student body, which will allow us to cross-reference answers in the other sections by a number of student characteristics. Needless to say, I'm quite excited about the possibility of this data-set helping to fill key knowledge gaps in the body of research on student financial aid, employment, attitudes towards the classroom, etc.

We also put the finishing touches on OUSA's cost inflation project, which will be an expenditure-side analysis of university finances since Reaching Higher. We're hoping that this analysis will provoke some thoughtful and necessary discussion on the direction and sustainability of Ontario university finances.

No doubt August will contain many late nights and early mornings as the election, survey launch and policy paper due dates approach. Hopefully it will all yield important results for students.