Media Releases

U of T and Western sign agreement with Access Copyright

January 30, 2012

TORONTO, ON — The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty today announced that they have each reached an agree­ment with Access Copy­right to allow their com­mu­ni­ties to repro­duce copy­right-pro­tect­ed mate­ri­als in both print and dig­i­tal for­mats.

“We believe that this agree­ment is fair for all the par­ties – those who cre­ate the mate­ri­als, as well as stu­dents who gain access to copy­right mate­ri­als through the Uni­ver­si­ty,” said Cheryl Mis­ak, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Provost.  “This enables, with­in cer­tain lim­its, repro­duc­tion of copy­right mate­r­i­al for stu­dents’ use with­out con­cern for infring­ing on copy­right restric­tions.”

“This agree­ment gives us a con­ve­nient, com­pre­hen­sive way to share con­tent dig­i­tal­ly and in paper form from a reper­toire of mil­lions of pub­li­ca­tions,” said Jan­ice Deakin, Provost and Vice-Pres­i­dent (Aca­d­e­m­ic) at West­ern.  “The back­dat­ing of the agree­ment gives us peace of mind by cov­er­ing past dig­i­tal uses that may have exposed the uni­ver­si­ty and the indem­ni­ty pro­vi­sion increas­es the university’s legal pro­tec­tion against copy­right infringe­ment.” 

West­ern and UofT will each pay Access Copy­right a roy­al­ty of $27.50 per full-time equiv­a­lent stu­dent annu­al­ly.  This roy­al­ty includes what used to be a sep­a­rate 10 cents per page roy­al­ty for coursep­a­ck copy­ing, so there will no longer be a sep­a­rate roy­al­ty for such copy­ing.  The new roy­al­ty is sub­stan­tial­ly below the amount ini­tial­ly sought by Access Copy­right in its Tar­iff appli­ca­tion before the Copy­right Board.

This agree­ment will be in place until Decem­ber 2013 and will renew auto­mat­i­cal­ly for one year terms dur­ing which any par­ty can can­cel or rene­go­ti­ate the agree­ment based on six months notice.

“We wel­come this oppor­tu­ni­ty to work in part­ner­ship with West­ern and UofT” said Mau­reen Cavan, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Access Copy­right. “The edu­ca­tion and pub­lish­ing indus­tries depend on one anoth­er.  An agree­ment that pro­vides for usage of con­tent, fair com­pen­sa­tion to those that pro­vide the con­tent, with rules that favour sus­tain­abil­i­ty, is in the inter­est of all play­ers” said Ms. Cavan

 Over the course of the next year, a method will be joint­ly devel­oped to assess the actu­al vol­ume of copy­ing of copy­right pro­tect­ed mate­ri­als which will assist in deter­min­ing the appro­pri­ate­ness of the roy­al­ty struc­ture in sub­se­quent years.

 

Con­tact for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to:

Michael Kurts
Assis­tant Vice-Pres­i­dent
Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Mar­ket­ing
Uni­ver­si­ty Rela­tions
(416) 978‑5947

 

Con­tact for West­ern:

Kei­th Marnoch
Direc­tor of Media and Com­mu­ni­ty Rela­tions
West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty
(519) 661‑2111 ext. 85468

 

Con­tacts for Access Copy­right:

Mau­reen Cavan
Exec­u­tive Direc­tor
Access Copy­right
(416) 868‑1620 ext. 226

Roanie Levy
Gen­er­al Coun­sel, Direc­tor Pol­i­cy and Exter­nal Affairs
Access Copy­right
(416) 868‑1620 ext. 233