ARCHIVED — A Lori-Ann Claerhout
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COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS
REPY COMMENTS
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Reply comment from Lori-Ann Claerhout received on October 19, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Copyright law
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:
I would like to express my concern regarding the intellectual property provisions on the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI).
I work in the copyright office at Athabasca University, which has always been a distance education institution. For thirty years, we have delivered course materials to students enrolled in our programs. For thirty years, we have been creating artistic and literary material and have also been paying copyright holders to use their material in our courses.
Two major issues stand out as adversely affecting distance and online education: access to materials and term of protection.
1. Access.1.1 Technologies. Many of our courses have moved toward using online materials. Advances to encryption technologies and standard form contracts unduly restrict learners’ access to possible learning materials including “a research copy” and materials in the public domain. Large corporate copyright holders are often the beneficiaries of restrictive technologies at the expense of shared information.
1.2 Alternate formats. Some of our students have perceptual disabilities. The Copyright Act currently accommodates only students who can be “in person” at a traditional campus (see Section 32, Copyright Act). Allowing for large print copies of learning materials, written transcription of video and audio performances, and fewer restrictions on electronic file adaptations, discrimination against students with perceptual disabilities will be reduced.
2. Term of protection (Life + 50).
Currently, there is often difficulty in locating a copyright holder after death of the creator, if a large corporation does not hold the material. Extending the term of copyright ownership to “life
plus 70 years” can again only benefit the large corporations who handle reproduction rights while complicating the process to using material that should rightly be in the public domain.
I strongly urge the Government to consider the users of copyright material in finding a balance between them and copyright holders.
Sincerely,
Lori-Ann Claerhout
Copyright Officer
Athabasca University
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