This morning, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a unanimous opinion in Access Copyright v. York University, finding that approved tariffs for works in a collective copyright society’s collection were not enforceable against a user that chose not to be bound, and suggesting that the lower courts had applied an unduly narrow interpretation of fair dealing. Authors Alliance applauds this decision, the last to be authored by renowned Justice Rosalie Abella before her retirement from the bench.

The case involved a claim by Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright collective, which sought to have York University comply with an interim tariff approved by the Copyright Board of Canada for works in Access Copyright’s collection. In response, York University brought a counterclaim seeking a declaration that its guidelines for copying materials for education purposes constituted “fair dealing” under the Copyright Act of Canada. The case raised the question of whether copyright collectives can force users to license content from them, even if the users prefer to comply with their copyright obligations in other ways.

Authors Alliance, together with Professor Ariel Katz, intervened in the case, submitting a factum to the Court and participating in oral arguments. On the issue of whether the approved tariffs are mandatory vis-à-vis users, we supported the Federal Court of Appeal’s finding that the approved tariffs bind copyright collectives but cannot be imposed on users as mandatory tariffs. On the issue of fair dealing, we argued that in the absence of specific allegations of copyright infringement from copyright owners, the lower courts should not have dealt with the issues of infringement and fair dealing. In addition, we urged the court to consider that Access Copyright does not represent the interests of all authors, and especially not the authors whose primary concern is their works having the greatest possible reach and impact.

In the decision, Justice Abella dismissed both York University’s and Access Copyright’s appeals. On the issue of mandatory tariffs, she found that the interim tariff set by Access Copyright was not enforceable upon users who chose not to be bound, as Authors Alliance argued in our factum. Justice Abella further stated that Access Copyright was not given authority by Parliament to make such licensing schemes mandatory on all users of the works in its collection. Emphasizing that the statutory scheme allowing collective administration of tariffs is intended to protect users from “unfair exertion of [] societies’ market power,” Justice Abella pointed out that allowing a society to “foist a license on an unwilling user” was inconsistent with “the protective purpose of the regime.” She emphasized the right of users to access texts in other ways than by obtaining a license from Access Copyright—which, as Authors Alliance pointed out in our factum, is a non-exclusive licensing agent that does not have a monopoly on the use of the works in its collection—and paying the interim tariffs.

The Court did not make a ruling on the issue of fair dealing because, in light of the finding that the tariff was not mandatory against York University, it found there was no live dispute between the parties and that it therefore need not reach the issue of fair dealing. Authors Alliance had urged such an approach in our factum, pointing out that without specific allegations of infringement from copyright owners, the lower courts should not have dealt with infringement and fair dealing.

Nonetheless, Justice Abella stated forcefully that the Supreme Court did not endorse the narrow vision of fair dealing set forth by the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal. This is because the lower courts inappropriately “approached the analysis from an institutional perspective only, leaving out the perspective of students that used these materials.” Under a view of fair dealing that did consider the students as the users of these materials, the educational purpose of the copying would weigh in favor of a finding of fair dealing. Instead, the fair dealing question before the lower courts should have been whether the copying “actualizes the students’ right to receive course materials for educational purposes in a fair manner.” Authors Alliance applauds the renewed focus on the educational purposes of the copying in this case and Justice Abella’s emphasis on these purposes as supporting a finding of fair dealing.

Authors Alliance is pleased with the Court’s ruling, which adopted many of the principles set forth in our factum. We pointed out that authors are not a monolith, and Access Copyright did not represent the interests of all authors. By emphasizing that Access Copyright had no standing to sue for copyright infringement, as it was not a copyright holder, the court signaled that the mandatory tariffs were not aligned with the interests of all authors. Indeed, many authors have as their highest goal seeing their works reach broad audiences and contribute to the progress of knowledge, such as being used in higher education, as the works in the case were. The robust interpretation of fair dealing offered in the decision was consistent with the thrust of our factum—that Authors Alliance’s members interests are best served by a robust application of fair dealing that does not interfere with these dissemination goals.

Authors Alliance is grateful to Lenczner Slaght attorneys Sana Halwani, Paul-Erik Veel, and Jacqueline Chan, as well as law clerk Anna Hucman, for pro bono assistance with this intervention.

The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa is currently considering the Copyright Amendment Bill, an update of the country’s 1978 copyright legislation. In response to an invitation from the the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry, we submitted comments in support of the copyright exceptions included in the draft bill.

Our comments explained that authors can benefit from exceptions to copyright throughout the creative process and long thereafter. We shared how copying, quoting, and generally reusing existing cultural material is critically important to the production of new creative works and the advancement of knowledge. Nonfiction and fiction authors alike rely on exemptions to enable criticism, commentary, and illustration, among authors uses, to create new works and contribute to public discourse.

With respect to exceptions in the draft bill for educational and academic activities, we described the ways in which exceptions for these uses can also benefit authors, enabling them to reach wider audiences, helping them to build reputational capital, and amplifying their ability to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. And finally, regarding proposed exceptions for libraries, archives, museums, and galleries, we shared how these exceptions promote the long-term interests of authors, ensuring that their works are discoverable and preserved.

Including carefully crafted exceptions to copyright in South Africa’s copyright laws will promote a vibrant creative ecosystem and serve the public good. We commend the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa for the inclusion of these provisions in the draft Copyright Amendment Bill and look forward to tracking its progress. For the full text of our comment, click here.

Today, Authors Alliance joined Public Knowledge and four other civil society groups to urge Congress to amend the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (“JCPA”) to clarify that the bill does not expand copyright protection to article links and that authors and other internet users will not have to pay to link to articles or for the use of headlines and other snippets that fall within fair use.

The JCPA (H.R.1735 in the House and S.673 in the Senate) proposes to create a four-year “safe harbor” from antitrust law, allowing print, broadcast, and digital news companies to band together to negotiate compensation terms for their news stories with the largest online platforms. While the goal of the bill—to preserve a strong, diverse, and independent press—is commendable, the bill’s framework relies on a fundamental mischaracterization of U.S. copyright law. As currently drafted, there is a risk that the JCPA could be interpreted by courts to implicitly expand the scope of copyright.

As our letter explains, linking is outside of the scope of copyright in the U.S., as merely linking to external content does not implicate any of a copyright owner’s exclusive rights. Furthermore, the use of brief snippets of content—such as headlines, images, or short excerpts—that often accompany links are minimal quotations of copyrighted material have been consistently found to be fair uses under copyright law, and protection for these types of uses is mandated by the Berne Convention. These fair uses cannot be banned or substantially curtailed without running afoul of Supreme Court jurisprudence, the First Amendment, and multilateral international obligations.

To address these issues, our letter asks Congress to create a savings clause that makes it clear that copyright protections are not being expanded to include linking, or fair uses of snippets from the linked material. The full text of our letter is available here.

Authors Alliance is grateful to Argyri Panezi for this guest post. Panezi is an Assistant Professor at IE Law School where she teaches contracts, copyright law, and principles of LegalTech. Her current work focuses on copyright issues related to digital libraries, on law and AI (contractual and extra-contractual liability), and on legal technologies, specifically examining e-Justice developments within the EU. She is also a research fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University, where she explores the notion of critical digital infrastructure as well as state and federal regulatory frameworks that govern ISPs in the context of public internet access, focusing on access for critical utilities during emergency situations. She holds a law degree from the University of Athens, an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. from the European University Institute.

On June 1, 2020, four publishing houses, Hachette Book Group, Inc., HarperCollins Publishers LLC, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and Penguin Random House LLC, filed before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York a copyright infringement action against the Internet Archive for the Archive’s operation of what it called a “National Emergency Library” (NEL) after the first US shelter-in-place orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, on March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive had announced the launch of a temporary online NEL to support “emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries were closed due to COVID-19.” In their announcement the Archive called on authors and publishers to support the effort, which would ensure “temporary access to their work in this time of crisis.” It provided an opt-in option for authors who wanted to donate their book(s) to the NEL, and an opt-out option for authors who wanted to remove their book(s) from the NEL.

The NEL collection ceased operation on June 16, 2020, and the Internet Archive returned to its previous system of controlled lending of copyrighted works (on Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) see previous posts here and here). Even though the operation of the NEL was limited in time, argument about its propriety continues and has wider implications relating to the libraries’ multiple roles during and beyond emergencies. Stakeholders’ reactions to the NEL appear to be mixed. The Association of American Publishers, for example, issued a public statement opposing the Internet Archive’s NEL initiative. Meanwhile, the Archive has published a number of stories from librarians, educators, parents, and researchers endorsing the initiative.

The pending case, Hachette v. Internet Archive, introduces a new dimension to existing debates around electronic access to library material, particularly around e-lending, raising at least two important questions: Did the emergency created by the COVID-19 shutdowns introduce new market failures as regards access to critical educational and research material, or as regards access to library works in general—or do these emergencies merely highlight possible already-existing failures? Furthermore, can emergencies justify additional exceptions to copyright laws covering electronic access to library material, and if so, under what circumstances?

In my recent article, A Public Service Role for Digital Libraries: The Unequal Battle Against (Online) Misinformation Through Copyright Law Reform and the Emergency Electronic Access to Library Material (forthcoming, 31 Cornell J.L.& Pub. Pol’y_ _ (2021)), I examine the ongoing Hachette v. Internet Archive litigation, placing it in the context of earlier US copyright case law that deals with the digitization or the making available of copyrighted works for educational, research, and other purposes (notably: Authors Guild v. Google, Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, and Cambridge University Press v. Becker). There is also a global debate focusing on similar issues, apparent, for example, in similar cases brought before courts in Europe (Technische Universität Darmstadt v. Eugen Ulmer KG and Vereniging Openbare Bibliotheken v. Stichting Leenrech), India (University of Oxford v. Rameshwari Photocopy Service), and Canada (CCH Canadian Ltd v. Law Society of Upper Canada and the recent York University v. Access Copyright).

Taking the Hachette v. Internet Archive case as a starting point, my article reflects on the current and potential future role of copyright doctrine in preserving institutional functions of libraries and discusses how the COVID-19 emergency exposed new but also highlighted existing market failures.

Libraries’ public service role includes safeguarding and providing equal access to research, to educational material, but also to credible information, including in the digital environment. Both on- and offline libraries serve a function as trusted and, in principle, neutral places dedicated to equalizing access to credible information and knowledge in societies with structural inequalities and biases. Particularly during this pandemic, libraries have embraced their institutional role and joined the fight against misinformation, including about the pandemic. The article examines the extent to which current US copyright law supports libraries in these increasingly pertinent functions and advocates for the copyright framework to provide enhanced support to libraries.

Authors Alliance, joined by the Library Copyright Alliance and the American Association of University Professors, is petitioning the Copyright Office for a new three-year exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) as part of the Copyright Office’s eighth triennial rulemaking process. If granted, our proposed exemption would allow researchers to bypass technical protection measures (“TPMs”) in order to conduct text and data mining research on literary works that are distributed electronically and motion pictures. Last week, Authors Alliance responded to questions posed by the Copyright Office as it considers the merits of the proposed exemption following last month’s public hearing on the exemption.

Text and data mining (“TDM”) refers to automated analytical techniques aimed at analyzing digital text and data in order to generate information that reveals patterns, trends, and correlations in that text or data. TDM has great potential to enable groundbreaking research and contribute to the commons of knowledge. As a highly transformative use of copyrighted works done for purposes of research and scholarship, TDM fits firmly within the ambit of fair use. But TDM researchers are currently hindered by Section 1201 of the DMCA, which prohibits the circumvention of TPMs used by copyright owners to control access to their works. Section 1201 makes TDM research on texts and films time consuming and inefficient—and in some cases, impossible—working against the promotion of the progress of knowledge and the useful arts that copyright law has been designed to incentivize.

Following last month’s hearing, the Copyright Office asked proponents and opponents of the proposed exemption to: 1) describe minimum security measures eligible institutions should be required to use to secure corpora of literary works or motion pictures used for TDM research and 2) share views on potential regulatory language that would limit a researcher’s ability to view literary works or motion pictures included in corpora. In addition, opponents were given the opportunity to respond to changes proponents proposed in our reply comment to address opponents’ concerns.

Security Standards and Controls

With respect to security measures, our response describes the flexible process that information security and data management professionals at research institutions use to select and apply security controls to research data. This approach tracks the processes laid out in international standards and federal agency procedures. We explain why these risk assessment frameworks are superior to a globally applied fixed list of minimum security requirements and how they are consistent with the Office’s approach to information security in previous exemptions.

Our letter provides examples of common and effective security controls used in many research settings, including user authentication, use of encryption, event logging, and maintaining physical security of the resources housing the data. We recommend that the Office should identify these controls as examples of reasonable security measures, while leaving room for information security departments and researchers to fine-tune the precise security controls used to the specifics of the research corpus and the information system in which it is housed.

Prohibiting Researchers from Viewing Text and Images

With respect to the extent to which regulatory language should limit a researcher’s ability to view literary works or motion pictures included in corpora, we clarify that while researchers do not need this exemption for the purpose of viewing the full text or images of the works that they or their institutions have already obtained lawfully, researchers must be able to verify their research methods and research results. This verification requires that researchers have some ability to view corpus text or images. That ability is consistent with the research environments of both HathiTrust Data Capsules and Google Book Search, and it is consistent with fair use precedent.

Our letter explains why researchers need to view enough of a corpus to verify their methods and their findings. By way of example, if an algorithm tells the researcher that frame #133292 of a corpus copy has a high probability of being a scene of violence, and that frame corresponds to a scene in the film Pulp Fiction, the researcher would not watch a copy of the DVD or digital download in its original format to verify that finding. But at some point, either the researcher or peer reviewer may need to locate and examine frame #133292, a designation that exists only in the corpus copy, to verify the algorithmic finding. Our response explains that a blanket prohibition on viewing text or images would comprehensively undermine TDM research relying on the exemption and would provide little added value or protection given the other restrictions in the proposed exemption. For this reason, we recommend that—although we do not believe an express viewability limitation is warranted—should the Office choose to include one, it should use the model of the HathiTrust Research Center’s Non-Consumptive Use Policy rather than an outright ban on viewability.

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The Librarian of Congress is expected to issue a final decision on the proposed exemption in October 2021. We will keep our members and readers apprised of any updates on our proposed exemption as the process moves forward. We’re grateful to law students and faculty from the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law School for their work supporting our petition for this new exemption.

Authors Alliance, together with Professor Ariel Katz and represented by Sana Halwani of Lenczner Slaght, participated in oral arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada in Access Copyright v. York University. Our arguments furthered the views we shared in our factum submitted last month.

The case involves a claim by Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright collective, which seeks to have York University comply with an interim tariff approved by the Copyright Board of Canada for works in its collection. In response, York University brought a counterclaim seeking a declaration that its guidelines for copying materials for education purposes constituted “fair dealing” under the Copyright Act of Canada (fair dealing is the Canadian analogue to fair use). The case raises the question of whether copyright collectives can force users to license content from them, even if the users prefer to comply with their copyright obligations in other ways.

At oral argument, we began by explaining to the court that Access Copyright does not represent the interests of all authors. Authors Alliance represents authors whose primary concern is their works having the greatest possible impact by reaching the largest possible audience. Unfortunately, the flawed approach to fair dealing taken by the courts harms these interests, and undermines our members’ efforts to support education and informed public discourse, by creating a chilling effect on the dissemination of copyrighted works. Our members’ dissemination goals are advanced by a robust approach to fair dealing.

We further explained how the fair dealing factors in this case were incorrectly dealt with because they were not anchored to specific instances of alleged infringement. The abstract nature of that inquiry was a result of the lower courts’ willingness to make a determination of infringement outside of an infringement action without the proper parties and necessary evidence. The trial court concluded that there were reproductions that entitled Access Copyright to royalties—that there was infringement—without identifying any particular reproduction that was not fair dealing.

One example of why this approach is problematic is illustrated by the way the lower courts handled the “effect of the dealing” factor. The effect of the dealing factor is intended to consider the market impact of the defendant’s actions with respect to the plaintiff’s work on the sale of or royalties from that particular work. But instead, the lower courts looked to the effect on the market generally. This general market approach untethers the analysis from the economic interests of the specific authors of the works at issue, instead bringing in irrelevant evidence of copying by other institutions and of the impact of the copying on the sales of other works.

This was a mistake and the lower courts should have addressed only whether the reproduced work adversely affects or is likely to compete with the original work, not with the market generally. We asked the court to find that it was an error of law to consider this factor in aggregate and at a market-wide level, and to reaffirm the correct approach to the effect of the dealing factor is an investigation into the effect of a specific dealing on a specific work.

Authors Alliance is grateful to Sana Halwani for skillfully representing our interests at oral argument, and to the entire Lenczner Slaght team, including Paul-Erik Veel, Jacqueline Chan, and Anna Hucman, for pro bono assistance with this intervention. We will keep readers updated on the outcome of the case.

Authors Alliance, together with Professor Ariel Katz, has submitted a factum to support our intervention in Access Copyright v. York University, currently on appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada.

The case involves a claim by Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright collective, which seeks to have York University comply with an interim tariff approved by the Copyright Board of Canada for works in its collection. In response, York University brought a counterclaim seeking a declaration that its guidelines for copying materials for education purposes constituted “fair dealing” under the Copyright Act of Canada. The case raises the question of whether copyright collectives can force users to license content from them, even if the users prefer to comply with their copyright obligations in other ways.

As our factum explains, in the absence of specific allegations of copyright infringement from copyright owners, the lower courts should not have dealt with the issues of infringement and fair dealing. Because the lower courts did so without the proper plaintiffs, the result was a misguided approach to fair dealing that undermines users’ rights and the interests of many authors. Our factum also explains that even when their works are published under “all rights reserved” models, many of our members believe that their interests are best served with a robust application of fair use and fair dealing that does not unduly interfere with their dissemination goals, particularly in educational contexts.

On the issue of whether the approved tariffs are mandatory vis-à-vis users, our factum supports the Federal Court of Appeal’s finding that the approved tariffs bind copyright collectives but cannot be imposed on users as mandatory tariffs. We highlight some of the incoherent outcomes that would follow from the mandatory tariff theory, including the further marginalization of authors who are not a part of the collective’s repertoire.

To read our factum in full, click here.

The Supreme Court of Canada will hear oral arguments in the case on May 21, and Authors Alliance has been granted permission to present up to five minutes of oral arguments at the hearing. Authors Alliance is grateful to Lenczner Slaght attorneys Sana Halwani, Paul-Erik Veel, and Jacqueline Chan, as well as law clerk Anna Hucman, for pro bono assistance with this intervention.