… and when they say it’s a no-brainer, they don’t want you to think it over.

The Council of Ministers of Education (all the provincial governments except Quebec, which is more enlightened) is trying to sell the idea of more special loopholes and privileges in the Copyright Act here.

When you make personal use of other people’s material, no problem. When you build your business, including your educational business, on other people’s intellectual property, it’s fair to pay for it. It’s more than fair. When you have $40 billion a year in taxpayers’ money, you should be determined to support the people who create the material you teach with. But the Ministers just want a free ride after all.

It’s not complicated; it’s not difficult. The licensing collectives already exist, the agreements can be negotiated, fair dealing and sampling and free uses and such can be accomodated. They just want to take it, and they want the law to privilege them.

Note that by claiming they can run their businesses on anything they can take digitally, they are bullying rightsholders into retreating behind paywalls, TPMs, DRMs, the whole panoply of lock up and exclude and make unavailable.

And they then campaign for laws to encourage them to break down the protections…..