Canadian licensing agency warns educational royalties could drop by 55% in 2017

In Canada, the national licensing agency Access Copyright has warned that royalties could fall from C$11m (A$10.75m) in 2016 to C$5m (A$4.88m) in 2017 due to a drop in revenue from the educational sector, reports the Quill and Quire. The Quill and Quire attributes the drop in revenue to the introduction of an expanded ‘fair dealing’ definition in 2012, which meant that schools could rely more heavily on the exemption for photocopying educational material. Access Copyright executive director Roanie Levy said the estimated 2017 payout would be 80% less than the C$23.5m (A$22.96) distributed in 2013. ‘It took some years, but we’re now feeling the impact, 100%, of the decisions of educational institutions to rely on their self-interpretation of fair dealing instead of paying creators,’ said Levy, who added that the organisation is testing a transactional model with the educational sector that could potentially replace the traditional blanket licence.

Category: International news