Dear James,
the Estonian exception that we are highlighting today proves that it is equitable,
according to Estonians. Similarly, in Poland we have an exception that is not as broad as
the Estonian one, but much broader than many of the similar regulations across Europe - at
least within educational institutions, and for educational purposes, educators are free to
use any content, without any remuneration. This is not seen as not equitable.
In general, I don’t think it’s fair to see exceptions as something done “at the expense”
of someone else - for instance right holders. Mainly because there is no clear proof of
losses / substitutions caused by the use of content within an exception. So we cannot say
it’s done at somebody’s expense. And if we used this rhetoric we’d have to say that
copyright itself is non-equitable as well, done at the expense of users. Of course, to
this you can say that authors produced value, not the users. But then there is the whole
public domain space, where we agree as societies that it’s equitable to not remunerate
authors for use of their works.
The issue of public transfers is a separate one, in my opinion. If you have in mind
extended rights licensing, which is the most popular model for such transfers for
educational uses, I think that it’s an imbalanced model that puts great strain on public
education system. It’s enough to look at the ongoing debate about educational use of
in-copyright works in Australia (they do not have ECL, but a statutory license that has a
similar effect) - and the public education system is fighting right now to move to a fair
use mechanism.
Finally, I think that there is space for remuneration for educational use. But it needs to
be based on strong evidence, which we lack. And as a principle, i believe that
non-commercial uses (much of educational use falls into this category) do not require
remuneration.
Best,
Alek
On 24 Jun 2016, at 16:04, James Salsman
<jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Lisette,
Do you believe that broader educational fair use exemptions, to the extent they preclude
competition from in-copyright materials, need to be balanced with public transfers to be
equitable?
I agree we should benefit teachers, and I am sure that is what such exemptions do. But I
do not see how it could be equitable to benefit them at the expense of the authors they
recommend.
--
dyrektor, Centrum Cyfrowe
Twitter: @atarkowski
WWW: centrumcyfrowe.pl / creativecommons.pl
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