Reports
Statement on Copyright

August 31, 2009
Keith Banting, President


The Canadian Political Science Association and its members are concerned about copyright law both because of its impact on our work as educators and researchers, and because of its effect on the public debate and discussion that are essential to democracy and good public policy. Any new legislation must ensure that our universities and colleges and Canadian citizens more generally can make use of the enormous potential that new electronic technologies offer to enhance our ability to learn, to explore and debate the policy problems and political issues that challenge us, and to do so more efficiently at a time of economic constraint.

The monopoly rights in a piece of knowledge that are created by copyright law can be important in rewarding and recognizing those who create knowledge but they can also be damaging if they unduly restrict the flow of knowledge and the access of citizens and businesses to it. New electronic technologies have created exciting new ways for citizens to access, use, produce and share knowledge, but they have also been accompanied by the emergence of large and powerful commercial interests in these new technologies and the knowledge associated with them. While these interests often can be a source of innovation and efficiency, they also, unsurprisingly, will call on governments to strengthen the exclusivity of their rights over the knowledge they control, and if presssed too far this can damage the public interest in the free flow of knowledge and choke off benefits that the new technologies can bring.

We strongly urge the Government of Canada to update the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act so that their positive effects are extended to the production and dissemination of knowledge associated with new technologies. The use of knowledge for research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting should be interpreted at least as broadly as the Supreme Court of Canada has in its 2004 CCH v. the Law Society of Upper Canada decision. As educators and researchers we are alarmed at proposals that would make it too costly or illegal to use the new technologies to make portions of published work available through libraries to students and professors for discussion, learning and research. The law should promote the benefits that the new technologies can bring to interlibrary lending or the placing of readings on library reserves for students. The use for education and research of works that are publicly available on the internet should be exempted from copyright restrictions. Students and professors should not be threatened with statutory damages for activities that reasonably could be considered fair use in education or research. The new law should not allow Digital Rights Management technologies to prevent fair use of published work.

Our association’s members, in their daily work, need to be able to make the fullest use possible of new information technologies. Budget constraints, such as drastically reduced funding for the purchase of paper library books or research documents, have often made traditional ways of producing and disseminating knowledge impractical. Students and Canadians more generally expect us as educators and researchers to make maximum use of these new technologies, to educate in imaginative new ways, to contribute to solving public policy problems and to work on the political challenges Canadians face. Our concern goes beyond our own roles as educators and researchers: new information technologies have wonderful potential for drawing Canadians together to discuss Canadian and global issues, to act creatively to address these issues, and to contribute to our economic and social wellbeing. However the new information technologies also can hinder the flow of knowledge and limit access to it if the law confers excessively exclusive rights to that knowledge, shifting the benefits of new technologies too far in the direction of publishers, vendors, creators, and other copyright holders.

We applaud the broad consultative process that has been launched to consider changes to the Copyright Act and hope that any new legislation will reflect the concerns of our association’s members and others that fair use be interpreted in its broadest sense and be extended fully to the new information technologies.