As we look forward to celebrating five years of Authors Alliance in 2019, we are pleased to share our 2018 Annual Report to highlight our accomplishments over the past year. We’re grateful to our members, friends, and partners for supporting our work!
Scroll over the image below to read the full report, or click here to view the report in your browser.
20190109_Annual_ReportWe thank Robert Kirk Walker for the following contribution to our blog series, which celebrates works from 1923 that entered the public domain on January 1, 2019. Rob is a Supervising Attorney at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley, School of Law.
Do you like movies full of sly visual jokes, death-defying stunts, and ooey-gooey romance? Then, boy oh boy, do I have a film for you! Safety Last! is a romantic comedy starring Harold Lloyd, one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent era. Rivaling the best works of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the film includes stunning chase sequences, daredevil physical feats, and one of the most enduring images in all of movie history: a man hanging from the hands of a clock above a busy city street.
In the film, Lloyd plays a quick-witted striver who moves to the big city so that he can “make good” and earn enough to marry his hometown sweetheart. He gets a job at a downtown department store, and hijinks quickly ensue, involving the store’s snooty floor manager, mobs of sharp-elbowed customers, and an over-zealous policeman known simply as “The Law.” Following lucky coincidences and near catastrophes, Lloyd eventually wins the day—and, of course, the girl—after executing a series of still-impressive stunts along the side of a 12-story building.
With its emphasis on visual spectacle, its maudlin rags-to-riches story, and its overall celebration of plucky derring-do, Safety Last! is a near-perfect example of silent-era Hollywood. Unfortunately, this means that, like other works from the period, the film also includes a number of ugly racial, ethnic, and sexual stereotypes, included for cheap laughs. As such, the film is a superb example of both the artistic wealth and moral poverty of early cinema.
We thank Allison Davenport for the following contribution to our blog series, which celebrates works from 1923 that entered the public domain on January 1, 2019. Allison is a fellow at the Wikimedia Foundation (and a former legal research assistant at Authors Alliance).
Of the many works which entered the public domain on January 1st, I am personally most excited about Agatha Christie’s novel The Murder on the Links. The Murder on the Links is Christie’s third novel and the second novel featuring her eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel, which revolves around Poirot and his confidant Hastings solving a complicated double murder plot in the north of France, was described in reviews at the time as “notably ingenious.”* Like many of her novels, it exemplifies the conventions of British detective fiction, with a sharp-but-unusual detective, sensitive narrator, and stunning denouement that leaves readers reeling.
As a young, voracious reader, Agatha Christie was my constant companion through many a summer vacation. Agatha Christie’s characters inspired me to be curious, to think outside the box, and to seek adventure. For me, the works of Agatha Christie entering the public domain presents an opportunity for an entire new generation of young girls to be introduced to her works, maybe even in new forms. The “Queen of Crime” has already had her works translated into 44 languages, and adapted into countless movies, radio plays, and even graphic novels. To me, however, the intricate plots, exotic locales, and well-developed characters that inhabit Christie’s novels seem best suited to adaptation in an interactive form like a video game.
Studies show that 83% of teen girls between 13 and 17 play video games, and the primary motivations for women who play games are completion (i.e., finishing everything a game has to offer) and fantasy. Games which incorporate the detailed settings and plots of Christie’s novels would be ideal to encourage and inspire young female gamers. Getting girls into video games is not just about entertainment. Studies show that when young girls play games, they develop confidence with technological hobbies and are more likely to enter STEM careers. Agatha Christie was a pioneer in a genre which had previously been dominated by male voices, and as her works become freely available to adapt in new ways, I am excited to see how she inspires new generations of women to do the same.
*New York Times Book Review, 25 March 1923 (p. 14)
It’s about time! Harold Lloyd’s 1923 silent comedy “Safety Last!” enters the public domain today.
We at Authors Alliance are excited to join with other organizations and authors to celebrate Public Domain Day on January 1, 2019. For the first time in 20 years, works will be added to the public domain in the United States. The eligible works date from 1923, which means it has taken nearly a century for their copyright terms to expire, keeping many of them out of reach long beyond their creators’ lifetimes, and for decades after their commercial potential was exhausted.
Two resources stand out as excellent starting points for delving into this trove of newly available films, songs, and literary works. The Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain has provided a list of 1923 works entering the public domain today, complete with historical background and legal context. Meanwhile, John Mark Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania compiled an outstanding Public Domain Day Advent Calendar for the month of December 2018, which highlights one 1923 work per day in an entertaining blog post. As an example, this post from December 14 not only provides some history about copyright law (and why it took a very long 95 years for these works to enter the public domain), but also discusses why the complete series of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ popular serial Tarzan and the Golden Lion had a cliffhanger ending— for 21 years!
While the addition of new works to the public domain is certainly worth celebrating, copyright terms are still overly long, and unfettered public access to works from the 1920s and beyond will occur only gradually. Authors Alliance board member Tom Leonard noted, “as we ring in 2019 with a great list of new additions to the public domain, historians are likely to see a borderland rather than a new frontier. We can now make full use of what Edith Wharton and Rudyard Kipling had to say about the War to End All Wars, but the darker stories of Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque can’t be used so freely. 1923 is the first year in which radio takes hold in the American home, but we can’t easily look ahead to see how music and storytelling changed, because the rest of the decade is trickier to see with copyright still prevailing for many post-1923 works. 1923 was also the year before America’s immigration crackdown on Europeans from the south and east of the continent, as well as the restrictions on Asians who wished to live in the United States. The impact of this remains clouded by copyright restrictions that will eventually be lifted, but oh-so-slowly.”
We’ll feature more new public domain content on our blog throughout January—stay tuned for more posts in our public domain series!
If each of our members gave just $40, we’d meet our year-end
fundraising goals. Can you help us meet our target?
Since our founding, Authors Alliance has supported laws, policies, and practices that help authors reach wide audiences: 2018 was again characterized by these ideals. We released our most ambitious resource yet, a guide to Understanding and Negotiating Book Publication Contracts, which will help you to negotiate for author-friendly variations to your contract terms. We highlighted the role that authors play in making digital works more widely accessible to people with disabilities with the release of a report on Authorship and Accessibility in the Digital Age. We launched a new copyright fundamentals resource page on our website, which includes information on how copyright registration can encourage onward uses of your works (and provides step-by-step guidance on how to register a work).
This year, we also continued to weigh in on important discussions that affect how you can create and share your works. We secured a modified exemption to Section 1201 of the DMCA that protects and expands your ability to circumvent technical protection measures to exercise your fair use rights to use film clips in e-books. We endorsed a position statement on controlled digital lending, an interpretation of copyright law that would help you reach readers, particularly when your books are out of print or commercially unavailable. On the international stage, we participated in WIPO meetings, presenting statements on the benefits to authors of limitations to copyright for libraries, archives, and museums; education; and for persons with disabilities.
We spread the word about our rights reversion and termination of transfer resources at events near and far, including a CopyTalk webinar that walks step-by-step through our termination tools. We celebrated the rights reversion successes of authors who have regained rights to make their works available to new audiences, either under Creative Commons licenses or at reduced prices. We weighed in on the importance of termination rights in copyright reform debates in South Africa and Canada, and we urged the U.S. Copyright Office to consider differentiated fees for recording terminations of transfers to make it possible for more authors to exercise termination rights.
We’re proud of our 2018 accomplishments, but we cannot do this work without your support. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today to help us carry on our work in 2019. Every contribution enables us to do our part to help you keep on writing to be read!
photo by RonnyK | CC0
Canada’s Copyright Act, last updated in 2012 through the Copyright Modernization Act, is currently under review. In early 2018, Canada’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology adopted a work plan under which it is conducting a statutorily mandated review. Under this plan, the Committee invited written briefs from stakeholders. Today, Authors Alliance submitted a brief urging the retention of reversionary rights in Canada’s Copyright Act and recommending amendments to the provision that will enhance the utility of reversionary rights.
Under section 14(1) of Canada’s Copyright Act, any grant of interest in a copyrighted work made by an author (except for a grant made in a will) after June 4, 1921 automatically reverts to an author’s estate twenty-five years after an author’s death. Similar to the justifications for the termination of transfer provisions in U.S. law, the reversion mechanism is intended to address “a situation where a work, following the author’s death, had become more valuable over time,” giving the author’s heirs “the opportunity to re-negotiate the royalty terms to reflect the increased value of the work.”[1]
But reversionary rights also give creators the ability to give new life to works that have outlived their commercial lives but are nonetheless historically and culturally valuable. For creators who want their works to be widely shared and enjoyed, reversions are a powerful option for getting their works back out in front of audiences.
Because of the tremendous benefits of reversionary rights for authors and the public, Authors Alliance’s brief recommends retaining a reversionary right provision in the Copyright Act of Canada. To further maximize the benefits of the current provision, our brief also recommends several changes to Section 14(1):
Read more about our recommendations by viewing the document below or clicking here to download the brief. For more about termination of transfer under U.S. law, visit the Authors Alliance/Creative Commons Termination of Transfer Tool at rightsback.org and the Authors Alliance termination of transfer resource page.
20181210_AuAll_CA_Review_Termination
[1] A.A. Keyes, Copyright in Canada Proposals for a Revision of the Law 76 (Apr. 1977).
photo by 422737 |CC0
The following analysis was written by Harrison Grant and Brian Trinh of UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic and Colleen McCroskey and Corian Zacher of Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at Colorado Law, under the supervision of Professors Jack Lerner and Blake Reid. We are grateful to the student attorneys and their supervisors for their tireless work securing exemptions to Section 1201 for authors and for this careful analysis of the results of recent rulemaking proceedings related to multimedia e-books.
On October 26th, the Library of Congress announced important new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that will improve authors’ ability to create in the digital environment. Thanks to the work of a coalition of authors’ organizations including Authors Alliance and two law clinics who represented them, today authors of any non-fiction multimedia e-book can use content from DVDs, Blu-ray, and digitally transmitted video to make fair uses of copyrighted material in their own works.
photo by hpgruesen | CC0
Last week, Authors Alliance participated in the thirty-seventh session of the World Intellectual Property (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR/37) in Geneva. Among other topics, the Committee addressed copyright limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions.
Authors Alliance presented a statement to the Committee on how limitations and exceptions for education can benefit authors, without undermining fundamental purposes of copyright policy, and can encourage the diffusion of knowledge:
We are grateful to Zachary Freeman, a third-year law student at New York University School of Law, for providing background research to support our work at WIPO.
Also of note during the session, Professor Sean Flynn from American University introduced a proposed Treaty on Educational and Research Activities (TERA), which aims to harmonize limitations and exceptions and protect cross-border sharing of works in order to promote education and research around the world. TERA includes a general flexible mandate to adopt exceptions for education and research modeled on Berne Article 10(2) and extended to include research activities. The proposed treaty applies to all works—including digital works—used by teachers, students, researchers for teaching, learning, materials creation, and research activities, as long as the use is restrained to the extent justified by a lawful purpose and is compatible with fair practice. Learn more about TERA here.
Authors Alliance will continue to report on the progress of educational limitations and exceptions at WIPO.
The following post is part of a series entitled “Misleading on Fair Dealing,” by Professor Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa. Here, Geist shares his recent testimony before the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Canada is currently considering a comprehensive copyright review, and these comments shed light on the issues surrounding educational uses of copyrighted content. Authors Alliance has been actively following this and other discussions of fair use and educational limitations and exceptions to copyright, both in the U.S. and abroad. We thank Professor Geist for sharing his testimony with our readers; the original post can be viewed here.
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I appeared yesterday before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage via videoconference as part of its study on remuneration models for artists and the creative industry. The Heritage study is designed to provide additional context and information for the Industry committee’s copyright review. My opening statement is posted below. It focused on recent allegations regarding educational copying practices, reconciled the increased spending on licensing with claims of reduced revenues, and concluded by providing the committee with some recommendations for action. An audio version of the opening statement is posted here.
Good afternoon. My name is Michael Geist. I am a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where I hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, and I am a member of the Centre for Law, Technology, and Society. I appear in a personal capacity as an independent academic representing only my own views.
I am sorry that I am unable to appear in person but I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in your study on remuneration models via videoconference.
I have been closely following the committee’s work on this issue, which will undoubtedly provide valuable input to the INDU committee’s copyright review. Last week I was dismayed to hear witnesses claim that Canada’s teachers, students and educational institutions are engaged in illegal activity. This claim is wrong and should be called out as such.
I’d like to address several of the allegations regarding educational copying practices, reconcile the increased spending on licensing with claims of reduced revenues, and conclude by providing the committee with some recommendations for action.
First, notwithstanding the oft-heard claim that the 2012 reforms are to “blame” for current educational practices, the reality is the current situation has little to do with the inclusion of “education” as a fair dealing purpose. You need not take my word for it. Access Copyright was asked in 2016 by the Copyright Board to describe the impact of the legal change. It told the Board that the legal reform did not change the effect of the law. Rather, it said, it merely codified existing law as interpreted by the Supreme Court. While I think that the addition of education must have meant something more than what was already found in the law, its inclusion as a fair dealing purpose was better viewed evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Second, the claim of 600 million uncompensated copies – which lies at the heart of the allegations of unfair copying – is the result of outdated guesswork using decades-old data and deeply suspect assumptions.
The majority of the 600 million – 380 million – involve K-12 copying data that dates back to 2005. The Copyright Board warned years ago that the survey data is so old that it may not be representative. Indeed, it is so old there are cabinet ministers who could have been the actual students in the K-12 schools at the time they were last surveyed on copying practices.
Of the outdated 380 million, 150 million involves copies that were over-compensated by tens of millions of dollars as determined by the Copyright Board and upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal. Education has had to file a lawsuit to get a refund of those public dollars. I can only imagine the public response if the federal government was found to have overpaid for services by tens of millions of dollars and it failed to take action to recoup that money.
The remaining 220 million comes from a York University study, much of which as old as the K-12 study. Regardless of its age, however, extrapolating some dated copying data from a single university to the entire country is not credible. It would be akin to sampling a few streets in Ms. Dabrusin or Mr. Blaney’s ridings and concluding that they are representative of the entire country.
Third, the committee has heard suggestions that the shift from print coursepacks to electronic course material systems (CMS) is irrelevant from a copying perspective. This is wrong. The data is unequivocal: printed coursepacks have largely disappeared in favour of digital access. For example, the University of Calgary reports that only 53 courses used printed coursepacks last year for a student population of 30,000.
Why does this matter? Three reasons:
First, as universities and colleges shift to CMS, the content used changes too. For example, an Access Copyright study at Canadian colleges found that books comprised only 35% of materials. The majority was journals and newspapers, much of which is available under open access licenses or licensed by other means.
Second, the amount of copying with CMS is far lower than with print. While Access Copyright argues there should be a one-to-one ratio – for every registered student the assumption should be that every page is accessed even for optional readings – the data (and common sense) tells us this is unlikely.
Third, CMS allows for the incorporation of licensed e-books. At the University of Ottawa, there are now 1.4 million licensed e-books, many of which involve perpetual licences that require no further payment and can be used for course instruction. Tens of thousands of the e-books are from Canadian publishers and in many instances universities have licensed virtually everything offered by those Canadian publishers.
What this means is that the shift from an Access Copyright licence is not grounded in fair dealing. Rather, it reflects the adoption of licenses that provide both access and reproduction. These licences get universities access to the content and the ability to use it in their courses. The Access Copyright licence offers far less, granting only copying rights for materials you already have.
With the increased spending, why do some report reduced revenues? There may be several reasons.
First, licensing is often perpetual, meaning that payment comes once, not as an annual royalty.
Second, many works aren’t being used or copied. UBC reports that 69% of their physical items have not been used since 2004.
Third, despite the shift to digital, Access Copyright’s Payback system excludes all digital works. In terms of eligibility, its rules exclude “blogs, websites, e‐books, online articles and other similar publications. Only print editions can be claimed.” Moreover, the Payback system also excludes all works that are more than 20 years old on the grounds that they are rarely copied.
Fourth, Access Copyright has refused to adopt transactional licences, thereby sending licensing money elsewhere. Education is spending millions each year on transactional licensing which permits copying for a specific course, yet Access Copyright has not entered that market.
Fifth, consistent with what this committee heard from Bryan Adams, it may be that part of the problem lies with the relationship between authors and publishers, with authors under-compensated for the digital revenues.
Let me conclude with a few thoughts on solutions on remuneration.
First, efforts to force the Access Copyright licence on educational institutions through statutory damages reforms should be rejected. Education should be free to pursue the best licences the market offers, an approach that is in the best interests of both education and authors. At the moment, that comes directly from publishers and other aggregators, not Access Copyright.
Second, the government should work with Canadian publishers to ensure their works are available for digital licensing either in bundles or through transactional licenses. Given that digital licenses are sometimes the only source of revenue – Access Copyright’s Payback doesn’t compensate for older works and print sales of old books is typically non-existent – embracing the digital opportunities with a forward looking approach may be the only revenue source for some authors.
Third, governments should continue to pursue alternative publishing approaches that improve both access and compensation. For example, last week’s Economic Update announcement of funding for creative commons licensed local news should be emulated with funding for open educational resources that pays creators up front and gives education flexibility in usage.
Fourth, non-copyright policies must be examined. For example, how is that Canadian content rules for film and television production still treat Canadian book authors as irrelevant for Cancon qualification?
Despite the criticism, the 2012 reforms were about establishing rules to foster a digital market for the benefit of all stakeholders. It is still early in the process, but we have already seen a huge shift to digital for both education and the publishing industry, with hundreds of millions spent on digital licensing. That’s a win for everyone except for an outdated licence that now offers little value when compared to other market and legal options.
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Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. His website, michaelgeist.ca, provides coverage of intellectual property, technology, and copyright issues in Canada.
2018 has been a banner year for Authors Alliance. We’ve done more than ever before to fulfill our mission of supporting authors and the public good. This Giving Tuesday, please consider a donation to support our work. Gifts in any amount are deeply appreciated, and every dollar helps us to help authors. Read on to learn more about our education and advocacy!
This fall, we released Understanding and Negotiating Book Publication Contracts, the fourth volume in our series of educational guidebooks. This guide, our most ambitious to date, explains common clauses in publication contracts and presents strategies for savvy negotiation to help authors to shape book contracts to reach their creative and pragmatic goals. As with all our resources, we’ve made the guide available as a free download under a Creative Commons license in order to reach all authors who might need it.
We also continued our commitment to other educational efforts for authors, including a series on the importance of copyright registration to the public record and a report on authors’ role in creating digital content that is accessible to readers with disabilities. We pressed forward in our advocacy for sound copyright law and policy, participating in Copyright Office discussions on topics ranging from sensible fee structures to mandatory deposit copies and speaking out to protect fair use rights. We participated in panel discussions and workshops to promote fair use and open educational resources across North America and abroad. We featured interviews with our members, highlighting their publishing successes in open access and commercial formats. And we have more exciting work underway for the coming year, including the creation of a new suite of resources to support scholarly communications.
Without our members and supporters, none of this work would be possible. If you value our principles of openness, our dedication to our community of authors, and our educational and advocacy efforts, please consider a gift today. Your tax-deductible donation will go directly toward fulfilling our mission of promoting authorship for the public good.
