“The University of British Columbia is transitioning to a new copyright environment…”


fuzzy copyright shared CC by PugnoM

“…and has given notice to Access Copyright (AC) that it will not operate under the interim tariff after August 31, 2011.”

This is a fairly huge development here at UBC, as we are joining twenty-six other Canadian institutions in opting out, and in doing so will need to get our “new copyright environment” up and running by the end of this month.

If you are interested in learning more about the context for this decision you might check out Michael Geist and Howard Knopf.

We are trying to collect pertinent information and guidance at http://copyright.ubc.ca

I am hopeful that there will be some positive cultural shifts here at the University as a result of this development. There will be a higher profile for open educational resources and other Creative Commons licensed materials. And I dare to hope that some of the initial confusion and hassle around usage and “fair dealing” will inform and activate our energy when the impending revisions to Canadian copyright law again become an issue in the coming months.

In the meantime, there will be a lot of work to do informing and supporting the UBC community, and since I am listed as one of the copyright contacts I can only hope to be so positive about this decision in a few months. I’m grateful we have such amazing people at the UBC Library, our Bookstores and across the University working together on this. I believe that sharing of resources, strategies and experiences amongst the twenty-seven (and counting) schools that are making this transition will be critically important. On that note, I want to thank the University of Waterloo Library for making their wonderful resources available with a Creative Commons license. Their work was very valuable to us as we tried to get our own site built quickly (especially for our FAQ). I’m hopeful we can soon get the go-ahead to license more of our copyright resources Creative Commons as well.

10 thoughts on ““The University of British Columbia is transitioning to a new copyright environment…”

  1. Wow, this is huge, 26 schools opting out and moving beyond. I can’t even begin to fathom the scale of work you all must have to do given the size of not only UBC, but all the campuses working together, but I can’t help but thinking that working together is the only way at this, or just about anything. Very cool, and I can imagine you are busy!

  2. Great development, Brian. No doubt spurred on by you and colleagues at UBC who have been leading the way in both promoting the message and demonstrating the doing. When theory and practice converge, good things happen.

    Bravo.

  3. It saddens me that at this critical time we do not have an official affiliate for Creative Commons Canada such that those of us who care can provide support to those who are using CC licenses. There are still some gray areas in the application and interpretation of the licenses in Canada and more confusion we do not need.

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