Ariel Katz
Friday, August 3, 2007

Earlier this week, the CCIA, an association of computer and communication companies, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission accusing several professional sports leagues, book publishers and other media companies of misleading and threatening consumers with overstated copyright warnings (such as the FBI warnings available on many DVDs).

This practice of overstated and misleading warnings is not, of course, a US invention.  Canadian copyright owners are not shy of the practice.  An especially annoying example is one that I just came across in the university context.

Canadian universities, including our own UofT, have entered into licensing agreements with Access Copyright - The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.  The license purports to permit the university to reproduce copyrighted material beyond what it is entitled to under the copyright act, e.g., under the fair dealing provisions. Under the agreement, when the university prepares coursepacks, for example, it is required to affix the following prominent notice:

This material has been copied under licence from Access Copyright.  Resale or further copying of this material is strictly prohibited.

As a matter of law, the notice is highly innacurate and mistates the law.  The law entitles every student who purchased a copy of copyrighted material to resell it, just as they can resell their used textbooks or collection of old vinyl records.  Moreover, further copying may be permitted by the law under the fair dealing provisions.  Even if under some circumstances contract or license terms can restrict these user liberties (and it's an open question whether and when this can be done), a student who purchases the coursepacks is not a party to the contract between Access Copyright and the University. 

It's a shame that Acess Copyright requires Canadian universities to place notices which it knows--or ought to know--mistate the law; and it's a shame that Canadian univesities (inadvertently, I suppose) milsead their students as a result.