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Universities Agree To Email Monitoring For Copyright Agency
New submitter fish waffle writes "The universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have signed a deal with Access Copyright that allows for surveillance of faculty correspondence, defines e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, and imposes an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student to pay for it all. Access Copyright is a licensing agency historically used by most universities in Canada to give them blanket permission to reproduce copyrighted works, largely to address photocopying concerns that may extend beyond basic fair-use. Since the expiration of this agreement, and with recognition that many academic uses do not require copyright permissions or payments or are already covered under vendor-specific agreements, Canadian academic institutions have been united in opposing continuation of the agreement with the agency. Access Copyright has countered with a proposal for increased fees, and expansion of the definition of copyright to include linking and the need for online surveillance. In a strange breaking of ranks, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto have capitulated and signed agreements that basically accede to the licensing agency's demands. The Canadian Association of University Teachers bulletin provides detailed background on the issue (PDF)."
The fact that others are NOT doing this means that people in Canadian Universities can change to a different University. Lucky people.
Did I understand this correctly, linking to content is the same as providing a copy of the content and requires a fee? Does that mean that Google Canda is next?
You'd think the Universities would be the last to cave in to a blatant demand for protection money.
Can they really be serious? Linking is equivalent to a copyright?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
How can emailing a hyper-link be equivalent to photocopying? When one photocopies, they then get a physical copy of a document. On the other hand, e-mailing a hyper-link provides no such physical object.
Here's how to circumvent the insanity: Email actual documents and then argue that *no* hyper-links were emailed as required by the stipulation. How about that?
This practice sounds like complete the opposite of the principles of scientific research.
Except in Canada you have to give them the right to monitor email or internet traffic as you do have reasonable expectation of privacy.
Simply have to refuse to sign any paperwork which gives them the right to monitor. If they do monitor and try to do anything then they are basically providing evidence that makes your lawsuit very easy.
Use of encryption, and international email services on HTTPS, has started to rise in Canada.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The agreement reached last month with the licensing agency includes provisions defining e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student and surveillance of academic staff email.
Monitoring faculty email in this way may well violate the U of T's collective agreement with their faculty. I'm at another Canadian university, and I'm pretty sure it would violate ours.
...that no one intelligent will ever apply to again. Good job; now watch your rankings fall like the stones in your university administrators' heads.
Great Intellect...
I heard about the "copyright police" at university, where a bunch of petty small-dicked wankers have nothing better to do, then to get paid by scumbag publishers to hang around photocopiers to make sure nobody's copying too much.
Clearly, some fat cat assholes at Elsevier and friends are afraid of losing their obscene 45% profit margins.
But intrusive surveillance to monitor in case somebody might link to somebody copyrighted, is bizarre and utterly extreme. It's a bit like burning down the entire forest, just because there might be a snake somewhere. But then, with corporatist extremists seemingly on the march everywhere, and seemingly completely untouchable these days, little surprises me.
I honestly can't believe that U of T and Western would be bullied into to such an outrageous proposition, even if they were being paid money in an attempt by Access Copyright to gain a foothold so that other universities will fall in line. Although this upstanding company can surely be trusted with the contents of all faculty and student e-mail correspondences, including those containing original research ideas and algorithms that aren't intended to be disclosed to anyone else, it just doesn't sound like a good idea.
"Hacking" like that is probably enough to get you expelled.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I was about to say that I don't see the difference between URL-as-reference and international-standard-Harvard-system-referencing. Neither gives the reader access to something they wouldn't otherwise be able to see, and neither reproduces any content. This is a ludicrous state of affairs.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Actually, that makes me think... If they're monitoring your emails, start appending links to three random charities in each email, and demand that those charities get their cut....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Why would anyone at universities that haven't gone batshit crazy deal with these morons? Aren't links kind like what the web is about? Canada is getting it's tubes tied. With roughly the same result
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I have a blog that I write and own the copyright on. Will Access Copyright send me my cut if a student happens to send a link to my blog to a friend? And what if they send a link to their own blog? Will that student now be entitled to a partial refund of their 27.50 Canadian?
Seems like this could be a revenue stream that bloggers may have to wake up to!!
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Yeah, Stallman's The Right To Read may be getting linked a lot (for free, still) - but it is so apt.
Check your premises.
Via Ariel Katz, UofT Students and Faculty Demand Suspending the Access Copyright Agreement
I'm on faculty at a different Canadian university. So far, we've cut no deal with Access Copyright yet and I hope we stay strong. You can bet that I'm asking our union to keep an eye on the situation as it relates to the privacy rights of students and faculty!
Ironically, I benefit financially from Access Copyright, having registered as an author with them years ago when a colleague pointed out they were collecting money on my behalf, whether or not I made my claim against them. I'd much rather take a few hundred dollars out of their pockets to pass onto a copyfighting cause each year!
If my university does cave to Access Copyright, I'll cease using my university email. It'll be annoying to switch away from an address I've used for twenty years, but better than seeming to acquiesce to further indignities. I suspect that we'll see more and more academics exploring that option if Toronto and Western are setting a trend.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
That's such a small fee vs what people have had to pay for limited copyright infringements..
Keep in mind that the flat fee last year was $3.75 (which was paid through the University), plus an additional sum per page for course packs (which are usually paid and collected through the stores where the course packs are purchased).
And if I'm reading the article and the backgrounder correctly, the flat fee has increased to $27.50, but the additional fee for each page hasn't gone away, and most likely the traditional penalties for copyright infringement haven't gone away either (if nothing else, the number of those so-called copyright "infringements" may begin exploding, where previously there used to be none, now that Access-Copyright is trying to creatively redefine and broaden what an infringement is supposed to be).
From what I can see, Universities in Canada are now more about making money and less about education. Not that you can't get a good education in the process but they are very focused on maximizing the amount of money generated.
At University of Victoria, they added an Engineering Department, it got a brand new building, tons of funding etc, and the reasoning at the time was that it would generate revenue via patents etc.
Meanwhile the Fine Arts department languished in the same ancient Quonset huts it had been in for 20 years or more, and didn't get a building of its own for another 10 years or so.
Students these days pay as much for 1 years tuition as I did for 3 years or more back in the late 70s/early 80s. I used to spend about $200 on all my books for a year, now some books cost over $100 easily.
I think the Businessification (if I can coin a term) of the University system is only going to continue sadly.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If only there were a way to encrypt attachments, or ideally an entire email!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel