Fantastic post. Thanks for adding to the discussion.

If producers of copyright material are to be deprived of their just due that is tantamount to robbery.

Should starving people be entitled to go into a super market and take food from the shelves.

I am 81 years old and working part time because my copy right earnings do not pay sufficient to supply the bare necessities.

Few if any teachers have to work past retirement age.

I applaud you allowing your works to be used in the education system and in your case the communication lines and proper procudure worked wonderfully!

However, it is a very differnet situation out there when trying to get permission from creators to use their work.

Many times, the authors, rights-holders, and creators cannot be found or contacted for permissions. Their contact info is simply not available. Or the "Canadian distributor" for an international author does not have the ability to grant permissions for use in Canada!

It is nowhere as simple as you posit to find, gain and grant permissions for usage in the classroom. I've waited for weeks and weeks for a response from an author, and never heard back.

It is not a reliable and consistent strategy that educators can adopt to address this issue.

We should have the rights to use it, and then awknowledge and inform the author and creator if they are available and contactable!

I agree with you where the author's permission is unattainable. I also allow educational use as long as due credit is given either in a small text blurb under or beside the image or in a bibliography. As long as those reading have some way of contacting me.

Some of us love those tearsheets with our name tagged on as they validate our work.

I'm not so much against you using it educationally as I am about blatant usage by others with complete disregard for the author.

In terms of due credit, Fair Dealing requires as a minimum what you suggest here, so your wishes are pretty well in line with the law. Most schools have very strict guidelines regarding plagarism, and failure to cite sources is a clear cut case of that.

What educators are looking for is clear rules from copyright law to dictate how they can use things, and in such a way that they can cover their asses as simply as possible. Fair Dealing works fairly well in this regard. The problem most educators have with these new proposals (prohibitions on cracking DRM, for example) is that they allow owners of content to lock them out of their legal rights (see comments elsewhere here about the Supreme Court and Fair Dealing). Given the shear volume of material used in education, asking permission for each instance of use would make use impossible.

Imagine that some of your images became seen as seminal works of photography (I would hope someday you'll be that lucky), and are added into the curriculum at art schools across the country. As an artist, would you want to evaluate and approve that many applications? As an educator, would you want to submit requests for every image used in a course? Even if there were rights clearing-houses for this, could you guarantee that every artist you wanted to use was a member? And of course there's the question - what if they're nowhere to be found?

I have to agree with everything you've said. I don't know what resources exist for contacting publishers or authors, but I've always felt there should be some system in place for registering the enforcement wishes of the owner of a copyright. We should be able to look up the ISBN number or something and know under what circumstances the work can be used or to where fees can be directed. It is not practical to expect every rights holder to have to have a dialog with every individual who has a need. There needs to be an autonomous system to handle this for everyone - I should think the government could play a useful role here. Let's not punish people for violating copyrights, but rather assist people to abide by them.

Sorry Rakey, on this one I'll have to disagree, and I think in your own case you're comparing apples and oranges.

Your arrangement was between you and Your Publisher, who has a Commercial Interest in using your work.

An individual teacher using your work in a handout or a student using it to support an assignment are different fish entirely.

According to this ruling, educational use (defined as non-commercial use in an accademic setting) is Fair Dealing and an individual's Right under copyright law.

I applaud you for letting your work be used accademically, and from the sounds of it both you and the publisher received benefit from this exchange. It's not the same thing though.

Great idea. Let's have everyone contact you personally. That's a good use of everyone's time. First, educators should just get a blanket exemption. At worst, it's free marketing for the creator.

If you don't agree to that, why not do it like a corporation? If my MinuteBook is not updated and I'm sued, the people suing me can't get ahold of me to let me know I'm being sued. If they can't reach me, I automatically lose. Do the same with creators. There is a registry for copyrighted works, simply add a contact for usage queries. If the person on the other end of that phone/email/letter cannot grant usage or cannot be reached, the applicant gains usage automatically. Copyright protection should not come down to legitimate users being lost in a pile of useless correspondence. Copyright was intended to ensure that creators were paid for their creations. It was not intended to make works inaccessible.

Wait.. So you don't believe it is a good use of YOUR time to have to contact me to use my photos but I should give up MY time used in creating the piece and not get the respect of an attempted contact? That's twisted logic and nothing but self-serving.

If you are worried about being sued by copyright holders, maybe you should think about that BEFORE publishing, not afterward.

Copyright law should not dictate how a work can or cannot be used based on inaccessibilty of the author of the work unless they are deceased. I can just see it now, "I didn't see a reply from them so I went ahead and used the author's work," only to find that the mail was hijacked by an overzealous spam filter.. LOL

As for accessibility, playing Devil's advocate here.. if you loosen copyright too much, those very works to which you want to gain accessibility may be even more inaccessible as artists will, in some case, not post their work for fear of copyright law not protecting their interests. So my advice is be careful what you wish for.

First, thanks for replying. Second, I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not actually putting my time over yours, and I'm certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't be paid or respected for your work. I'm a content creator too, and I like to get paid and respected! However, the current system of contact is HEAVILY weighted with responsibility on the part of the copyright users (as opposed to the copyright holders). All I'm suggesting is to balance that responsibility. At the moment, what's the cost to the holder if they can't be reached? Nothing. What's the cost to the user? Could be quite high. In any case, it will be higher than nothing. Why not normalize the system, simplify contact, and balance responsibility? I have been in several situations where I spent months tracking down a copyright holder to use one page of a book. After finally getting down to the right person who actually has the ability to decide, I get a no. If I could have either a) gotten to the right person sooner, or b) gotten the no sooner, I would have been a lot happier. This is not an isolated case. This happens ALL THE TIME. Particularly with those of us that work with educational institutions that want to maintain best practices and ask creators even in cases where they are not legally obliged to.

Further, most of Canada's laws are about what's "reasonable". Even if all my law dreams come true, I doubt that a judge would find one unanswered email as reasonable grounds to pursue damaging copyright infringement.

As for accessibility, yours is an argument I've heard many times. Oh no, if we don't pay our artists, they won't produce anything! In answer, I point to the open source programming community. Content creators, get a real job (using your creator skills or not, depending on marketability) to feed and cloth you and yours, then create your magic in your spare time and share it free with the world. Certainly, creators will argue that they do their best work when they don't have to worry about feeding their families. I've got news for you, that's true of everyone. Why should creators in particular mediums get a free pass? Where are the open source artists? Why not create a GPL for your creation? If you use it to make your life better, no charge. If you use it to make money, you pay. But I'm rambling again.

I'm argument hacking here, sorry about that. I think the original point here was about educators. As a creator, why wouldn't you want educators to use your stuff?

Years ago I contacted a publisher for permission to use more than would be considered fair dealing of a book… and this permission was granted. I think many people assume that in this current climate of excessive copyright such permission would no longer be granted.

I think you raise some good points in your response, but I would argue, that artists never, ever create in a vacuum. All works created today are derivative, based and influenced on previous stories, works, and aspects of the world, society and communities within which we all live.

Going all the way back to the ancient greeks and their plays they wrote and performed, all artisitic works have been influenced in some way on previous versions.

Shakespeare borrowed from Boccacio and Chaucer, who borrowed from artists previous to them. Rock music was based on early blues, all movies today owe homage and influence to directors from the past who created new narratives, techniques and tools.

Even a few years ago, someone tried to copyright "hot yoga", even though yoga has been around for thousands of years!

So, just because you can apply and get a copyright for your so called "original" works, does that mean that the artist and creator owe nothing back to the community and society within which they create? Without the society and marketplace in which to sell their works, which is based on influences and previous works of this society and community there would be no opportunities to even share and create their art.

So, in my view, allowing the educators of this country to use the collective artisitic works of this country and the Canadian 'canon' is the least these artists can do to show appreciation and to acknowldge that they could not have created their works without the past and present society in which they live and create.

Also, to address your point of why would people create Canadian works if the education system is not going to pay for any copyrights for it? Then why is the US eductation system's blanket fair-use clause for their educators not killing their entertainment industry?

Because the education sector is a small part of the profit revenue stream of these artists. They appreciate the exposure to a new audience that the educators provide them. In many cases students will go and purchase the works for their own library and private use if they enjoy it! I think that you are wrong to think that an educational fair-use clause will kill any canadian content generation.

Students and educators are not mass-copiers, nor distributors. We expose and educate using these materials and works once, not over and over again.

Using these works and materials in a classroom does not take away possible profits and motivations for artists to create. In fact, it creates the opposite. A chance for the artists to find new audiences and fans of their work.

Protect Canada's classrooms from exhorbitant fees and locks on materials! Share the knowledge and art of our world with the next generation!

At the heart of your argument is the belief that everything should be shared and free. If that is so, then why would organizations such as Univerities, for-profit organizations and others spend millions on, say, educational research without a reasonable expectation that it will be valued later on. It might happen, but not in Canada - such research will be carried out in places that place a value on such research. By creatin an environment in Canada where the rights of creators as well as users are valued, we support culture, industry, and education.

Actually, most of our scientific advances could not be obtained without the free sharing of knowledge that you have argued against. All scientific discoveries are based on previous works. Authors of the studies published in scientific journals do not receive a single cent in royalties for their decades of hard work, but this has not hindered the advancement of science. The same principle actually apply to all other areas of creativity. Which artist, musician, film maker or author can claim that they are not indebted to their predecessors?

People who produce and create materials specifically for the education market are very noble and provide a great service for the educators of this country.

I agree, they need to be provided a decent living to support their needs as they work to help educate the next generation of students.

However, as you are well aware working in the industry, each province has different expectations and learning outcomes, each district has different goals and expectations and each school and department has different needs and expectations.

So, how can a publisher of educational materials create works and tools that meet all these needs? They can't!

And how did they create these materials? By using guidelines, learning outcomes, Prescribed learning outcomes, and Integrated Resource Packages created and provided by the Ministry of Education!

So, do these producers and creators owe anything to the materials and people that they borrowed from to create their works?

Did they interview and consult any educators in the classrooms to see what their needs were?

Does a business get to profit from producing materials for an audience that they used and mined in creating that work? Is there no compensation for access and the time and effort and energy that the education system provided to the business to help them create this tool?

I think these are all very good questions and are an important starting point for this debate.

Education systems are not funded to support private business. 90% of educational materials are produced in-house and created by certified and educated professionals who know and work within the system. Those are who should be supported better!

And don't forget that very few teachers are using lesson plans from a box. Most teachers (I work in a public District) I know have spent years building their own lesson plans from materials they collected that support the expected learning outcomes. Some of the materials were written by educational companies (textbook publishers such as Pearson, etc), and some were produced for the general market, and incorporated into classrooms by the teachers. With the sheer volume of new media being produced, the options for educational use (and copyright infringement) are enormous. The law needs to be changed to reflect that situation, and to allow for unimpeded Fair Dealing uses. Nothing should be allowed to trump Fair Dealing, whether it's DRM or a printed EULA, or an Access Copyright "License". If I want to use a clip from a popular movie, the studio should not be allowed to prohibit that or make it illegal for me to rip that clip out and use it in my classroom.

I don't know where you are going here, but education systems using material for education purposes should be exempt. I am not a teacher or an educator but if my kids wanted to put a presentation together for their class on whoever the latest artist is for creative work day then they should be allowed…

Government and Education exemtions are a basic for any new law.

I agree -- we need a robust "fair use" clause that makes it possible to show films or television clips, or distribute readings to students formally enrolled in educational institutions, without having to worry about being arrested or charging exorbitant fees for the right to read assigned materials.

Yes and I as a writer was continually challenged by "don't you want the children to be educated." Yes I do but I was lucky to earn $15,000 a year while the same teacher wanting my material free would be earning between over $40,000 a year up to more than $70,000

I think it depends whether profit is made from using copyrighted material, how much material by a writer is used, and whether a writer is given credit. The use in a course of one or two copied articles by a particular writer does not profit a teacher or a school, and it doesn't seem a significant reliance upon a particular writer's work. If a teacher photocopies these articles for students, I think that should not be considered wrong. Neither should it be wrong for individuals to copy articles from print media or the Internet for private reading. However, obviously it should be illegal to make copies of whole textbooks, to use a writer's copied articles as the basis of a whole course without compensating the writer, to profit from using a writer's material without paying royalties, to use such material without crediting the writer for it, or to claim credit for someone else's written work. I do not mean that educators should be free from all concern about copyright.

Nevertheless, information should be as freely available to people as possible without threatening the livelihoods of writers. Access should not be strictly limited to those who can afford to pay for it. At some point, it is like the Hugh Grant character in "About a Boy" wanting royalties from carol singers every time they sing his father's song. A certain amount of income from written work should be expected from certain sources (e.g., from the sale of print media), but I think it is oppressive to expect income from every use that is made of something.

I also think that writers should be paid higher royalties by publishers and get a greater share of profits from films, but that is another issue.