The future cost of Carleton course materials is up in the air after the organization that sells the rights to works used in university classrooms applied to change its price structure.
Licensing agency Access Copyright, which represents a federation of authors and publishers, asked the Copyright Board of Canada to implement a $45 tariff per post-secondary student.
The board postponed the change in fees Dec. 23, implementing an interim tariff similar to the previous licensing agreement, according to the board’s decision.
The previous licensing agreement of $3.38 per coursepack plus 10 cents per page expired at the end of 2010, said Steve Wills, manager of legal affairs at the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).
The interim tariff will last until Dec. 31, 2013.
“It’s a choice by each institution whether or not they wish to use the tariff,” Wills said.
Universities have other options to access copyrighted material, such as digital licenses for academic journals and e-books, Wills explained.
“There’s less and less need for the photocopying and scanning, which are the main activities that would be offered under this Access Copyright tariff,” Wills said.
Wills said he suspects the tariff payment, when the amount is decided, will “be a matter for each institution to decide.”
Currently, the licensing fees are built into coursepack prices, Wills said.
If institutions like Carleton still want to make coursepacks, they have two options: pay Access Copyright’s tariff, or use an unaffiliated photocopy shop with an Access Copyright license, Wills said.
At present, Carleton has not signed on to an agreement with Access Copyright, said Peter Ricketts, provost and vice-president (academic) of Carleton.
“There is still a great deal of uncertainty around the potential costs of signing on to the Access Copyright agreement,” Ricketts said.
Jason MacDonald, Carleton’s director of communications, said he can’t yet comment on how Carleton is planning to adapt to the situation or how professors and students will be affected.
“Carleton and many other institutions have access to digital licenses that have been negotiated by an organization that represents a broad consortium of universities called the Canadian Research Knowledge Network,” Wills said.
“They negotiate agreements directly with academic journal publishers so the institutions that are part of the consortium can have access, so professors and students have access to this database of digital journals,” he added.
Wills said the AUCC does not expect the final tariff to be even close to the requested amount of $45, which he said is “at least two and a half times what they’re getting now, or were getting, from their university licenses.”
“That final tariff could be anywhere between $3.38 and the $45 requested by Access Copyright,” said Ricketts.
The uncertainty comes from the legal process the Copyright Board must follow to approve new fees, including presentation of evidence at a board hearing.
According to Wills, the process can take around two to three years to finalize.
Once the tariff is finalized, any post-secondary institutions that have used Access Copyright material under the interim tariff, starting Jan. 1, 2011, could experience retroactive charges, Wills and Ricketts both said.
This means if the Copyright Board sets the final tariff higher than what institutions have been paying, the institutions will be required to pay the difference.