The National last night featured the appropriation of writers' and publishers' copyright work by Canadian universities and schools. John Degen, ED of the Writers' Union of Canada, made the case at the Canadian Writers Summit in Toronto on the weekend:
The reason, according to Degen, is the recent changes made to Canada's copyright laws that exempt educational institutions from paying certain fees they used to pay.
Those changes may have been great for shrinking school-board budgets, but they're hurting Canadian writers and publishers, some of which are getting out of the business altogether or vastly reducing what they print.As they say, when students use other people's work without permssion or credit, the universities call it plagiarism and expel them. When the universities do it, they call it fair dealing and build it into their budget planning.
