Access Copyright, one of the country’s largest collectives representing 13,000 authors, said it will lay off staff and cut budgets due to the loss of millions in royalties under an Act of Parliament.
The collective announced July 13 that these actions are a direct result of the millions of dollars in royalties being lost as a consequence of the Copyright Act, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
Cabinet has not yet adopted a recommendation from 2019 from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that it restrain free photocopying currently permitted under the Copyright Act.
“Access Copyright’s board of directors has made the difficult decision to initiate a significant downsizing and restructuring of the organization due to the federal government’s decade-long inaction in fixing Canada’s publishing marketplace,” Access Copyright said in a statement.
The group did not respond to questions, and the scope of job cuts was not outlined, Blacklock’s Reporter said.
“This is 90 percent sitting on the desks of government,” said John Degen, CEO of the Writers’ Union of Canada. “They know what the problem is. They know what damage is being caused. Actual people are losing actual jobs.”
Authors and publishers have lost more than $200 million in royalties since 2012, Access Copyright said.
In 2012, Parliament amended the Copyright Act to allow for the copying of books without royalty payment or having to seek permission from authors or publishers as long as reproduction was for personal research purposes. The spirit of these guidelines is referred to as “fair dealing.”
In the same year, a Supreme Court decision in the case of Alberta v. Access Copyright expanded the private research exception to include the wholesale photocopying of textbooks and literature for use in the classroom.
Supreme Court documents revealed that York University admitted to the distribution of 29 million photocopied books for student course packs. In the absence of permission and financial compensation, lost royalties have amounted to more than $2 million per year.
“It is entirely up to the government at this point,” said Mr. Degen. “The rest of the world is looking at Canada, shocked and dismayed, knowing that we do not protect intellectual property.”
Established in 1988, Access Copyright set out to represent and support authors and publishers in the realm of licensing agreements.
In the absence of collectives, “it leaves it up to individual publishers and authors to have to protect their copyright in the courts,” said Mr. Degen. “That was the reason we created a copyright collective in the first place.”
“The mass, systemic free copying of creators’ works by Canada’s education sector outside of Quebec since 2012 has led to Access Copyright’s total distributions to rights-holders dropping by 79 percent,” the group said.
“It has also led to the start of the hollowing out of Access Copyright—a key piece of Canada’s cultural infrastructure that Canadian creators and publishers rely on to be fairly compensated for the use of their work.”
“Many writers and publishers noted how their incomes have declined since the changes to ‘fair dealing’ in 2012,” wrote MPs.
The Department of Canadian Heritage in a 2020 report confirmed decreases in sales by Canadian publishers as a result of wholesale photocopying.
