Open Letter to CAUT:
We are writing to express our deep disappointment with the position CAUT has taken regarding the on-going copyright dispute between post-secondary educational institutions and ACCESS Copyright (AC). Fernwood Publishing has always been in support of CAUT because its progressive stance in the interests of university teachers and post-secondary education. Given that history, we are not only disappointed in, but also quite puzzled by, the position expressed in the recent CAUT Backgrounder regarding the agreements reached between AC and the University of Toronto and Western University. Our disappointment stems not only from the various specific arguments made in the Backgrounder (some of which we think are wrong and/or misleading) but, more profoundly, from the general position articulated in that document. Our point of view in this copyright dispute comes from our many years as an independent Canadian academic publisher. Yet, we find it very difficult to understand why CAUT does not see that the AC/university dispute is, at its heart, a case of attempted “union busting.” All the talk about the new electronic world only disguises this fundamental essence.
AC is the collective bargaining agent for authors and publishers in Canada, not a “content broker.” Just as are the various faculty unions/associations are bargaining agents for university teachers, not “content presentation brokers.” AC negotiates with various institutional users of our work, bargaining for payment to authors and publishers. Because copyright is one of the key ways in which we get paid for the work we do, those payments are in their essence a significant part of our wages. Ironically, in the world of academic publishing, in Fernwood’s world, the majority of the authors are university teachers, the very people CAUT represents.
While the Backgrounder discusses several specific issues in the copyright dispute, in our reading, its key point is really what CAUT calls “bad behaviour” on the part of AC. From our vantage point, that bad behaviour is AC’s attempt to negotiate fees (wages) for authors and publishers. To say, as CAUT does in the Backgrounder, that by clinging to AC authors and publishers are “locked in the past” is essentially the same argument anti-unionists make in claiming that unions have outlived their usefulness in the new globalized, electronic, knowledge economy. If the new world of electronic publishing is “rendering ACCESS obsolete,” then couldn’t the same be said about the new world of electronic teaching rendering the bargaining agents chosen by university teachers equally obsolete?
The “alternatives” to AC, outlined in the Backgrounder, are also akin to the kinds of visions claimed by union busters. We’ll deal with the three mentioned.
Fair Dealing. The important issue here is not about how well fair dealing is defined in the proposed copyright legislation, even though the CAUT claim that it is well defined is open to debate and its vagueness will be a bonanza for litigation lawyers in the years following the passage of Bill C-11. To say that the proposed bill is an alternative to negotiating copyright fees is akin to saying that workers should leave the determination of their wages to the state. That kind of suggestion, we posit, given that until now universities have refused to negotiate, essentially locking out authors and publishers, would in similar union circumstances be called back to work legislation.
Site Licensing. Most Canadian authors and (academic) publishers need a collective bargaining agent because we do not individually have the resources to negotiate with every post-secondary institution and/or monitor the use of our work at every post-secondary institution. Suggesting that we do that through site licenses is no different than saying that university departments, for example, not university-wide unions, should bargain wages and working conditions with their employers. Why negotiate with a union when a university could/should develop “site licenses” with sociologists, engineers, biologists and so on? Wouldn’t every post-secondary institution love to have that kind of power over their workers!
Open Access Publishing. This alternative completely disappears the workers in publishing. It is saddening to see in the Backgrounder that publishing workers are not mentioned, appearing only as “content providers.” In this public debate about copyright it is imperative to be mindful that the words of authors are made accessible to readers through the work of editors, copy editors, designers, production assistants, publicists and all the other workers in the publishing chain. Open access, as alluded to in the Backgrounder, deletes all that work: the world proposed looks like some kind of professoriat chat room. Academic authors, who are well paid and whose careers have been supported by publishers like Fernwood, would write directly onto ‘the internet’ to readers. We think this envisioned world is not real, in part, because its predecessor, the paper publishing world envisioned in the Backgrounder has disappeared the work of authors and publishers. Even open access publishing, as it currently exists and most likely will exist, has many of the same workers as the old world of copyrighted paper publishing: editors, designers, copy editors, publicists. Who is and will be paying them for their work? In other words, open access books and articles do not just magically appear on the internet. The internet does not change publishing fundamentals, there isn’t a direct path between authors and readers.
We will not say that ACCESS Copyright is a perfect organization, but it is our bargaining agent and there is no question that authors and publishers need a collective bargaining agent. Nor will we say that the recent agreements are perfect. But, at least U of T and WU have chosen to bargain with authors and publishers. We think CAUT should be arguing the opposite of its stance in the Backgrounder: recommending that other post-secondary institutions do the same as U of T and WU –negotiate – rather than labeling our negotiating as “obsolete” and arguing that we should not have a bargaining agent.
Wayne Antony/Errol Sharpe