CBC’s New Licensing System Causes
Anger
A new system to protect copywritten (copyrighted?) content on the CBC News website is causing some anger.
A few months ago the CBC introduced a licensing system that allows users to legally post all of parts of CBC News and sports articles on their own sites – at a hefty fee. The price for posting one article externally for one month is $250.
“We’re not doing anything we haven’t always done. People can make use of excerpting or linking, that’s always been free of charge,” CBC spokesperson Jeff Keay said on the phone this afternoon. “But what we’re really doing and what we’ve always done is to protect our brand from inappropriate use.”
But the system has its critics.
This morning in Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow called the system a “bizarre joke.” He noted that iCopyright installation on cbc.ca linked to a SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) site that is offering a reward of up $1,000,000 for reporting copyright violations.
Link to an industry association site, with a possible reward.
The page has since been changed on the CBC installation.
On the Canadian Media Policy Portal, a blog about media policy and regulation, Cameron McMaster said the prices for legally using CBC material are prohibitive. (For more see Cameron McMaster’s post on how the system works and the prices). McMaster notes the system also seems to caps the number of times you can print a story at five and he’s involved in a Facebook group that has sprung up to oppose the initiative.
“My question is why would anyone even click that licence button at all, when they can copy and paste and printscreen? Are those actions trackable?” McMaster asked. Well it turns out that yes, they are.
In addition to the iCopyright system, the online news division also recently introduced a second unrelated system that tracks what and how often readers copy and paste material from the site.
This system, called Tynt Insight, collects anonymous data on how many people are copying content on cbc.ca, how many words have been copied, what is being copied. The system is unrelated to the licensing effort, and is a pilot project.
“Nothing to do with licensing,” Keay said, “We use it as another tool to track site use and to provide a helpful link back to our stories.”
Tynt bills itself as a “completely new way of looking at how people view and consume content on the web, while retaining their complete privacy,” the company’s blog says. The blog also notes that the average length of the copied content is about 140 words, which it says falls “within the margin of “fair use” from a copyright perspective.”
However this also implies that the reverse is true. The Tynt script, which is on CBC news pages, can track when whole articles are being copied and how often that happens, so it could be used as a tool to monitor the frequency of copyright infringements, although it offers no way to remedy those infringements, because the offenders are anonymous.
Keay says there is no conspiracy theory here. He says the iCopyright system is more about saving money for the CBC than anything else and it’s unrelated to Tynt. He said the CBC previously would have to manually handle the license requests, which was slow and time-consuming, now with the iCopyright system, it is automated.
McMaster said in a blog post yesterday he was disappointing with the move:
It’s a real shame that the CBC has taken this road of revenue generation, but the real problem is that it is underfunded and has to compete with private broadcasters on the television end, and media conglomerates that own newspaper websites.
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Thank you for responding!
I’m glad to see that CBC is engaging the public on this issue. I would like to point out that my strongest concern with the new system is that it confuses Canadians about their copyright exemptions by invoking Fair Use rather than Fair Dealing. By using an American company that operates according to different kinds of legislation, the service doesn’t provide any information about how Canadians can actually use copyrighted content according to its own laws.
Canada is in the midst of fighting a very strong battle for copyright sovereignty, which CBC reports on very well. I would think that the CBC would also like to foster copyright competency by actually invoking Canadian copyright law.
Now that you report that you also use the Tynt script that creates an arbitrary limit on Fair Use of 140 words, I am yet again wondering whether the CBC understands what Fair Dealing is at all. It is not the size of the excerpt that matters, but how the dealing works with the material.
As for my participation in the groups that exist on facebook, I am merely providing further information. I am trying to direct the public to recognize that we have already paid for the CBC, so boycotts are not the answer. I appreciate the CBC, and I value its content. I think Canadians do too, but the recent moves to ensure its brand give the impression that CBC doesn’t serve its public, but rather advertisers.
All published information does not require requests to use it; otherwise, there would be no news, commentary, or scholarship. I imagine using an automatic system makes licencing easier, but when it tracks every use and judges whether something is infringement solely based on word count, we’ve entering into a world where freedom is based on length and number rather than spirit and intent.
Thanks for elaborating on how this new system operates, I hope that you add sections to licencing links that explain Canadian Fair Dealing provisions rather than let them think that they are under the watch of DRM Bounty Hunters.
best,
Cameron McMaster
Hi Cameron,
Tynt, as I understand it, doesn’t restrict to 140 characters. That’s the “average length of the copied content” on its platform, not a restriction.
ps. Good point about the difference between Can and U.S. law.
I certaining hope it doesn’t restrict it to 140 characters! Otherwise fair use = twitter!
[...] CBC’s New Licensing System Causes Anger [...]
There’s more about Tynt at Slashdot, including the standard Firefox workarounds like NoScript and AdBlock Plus, as well as comments from a Tynt employee.
Okay, I consider this tracking tech usage Unnerving. Maybe even a tad rude.
When I cut ‘n’ paste for the benefit of discussion boards elsewhere on the Net, I tend to make a habit of linking back to the source site, encouraging people to Go Look At The Original Material. Because it’s usually good work.
The presumption which using this stuff, including the boilerplate legalese referred to earlier, implies a default suspicion of the audience, regardless of what the people who decided on this policy believed they were doing at the time that decision was taken.
And, as others noted, we’re already paying for this service via taxes. Whether it’s income, estate, GST, HST…and, yes, we’re still well aware that Parliament’s still shirking on paying on our behalf what it ought to be. As it’s been shirking for over three decades, and given the current PM’s opinion of the Corporation and of his POV re: the larger public’s opinion of his opinion, as it likely will continue to shirk for the near future.
[...] McMaster still has concerns because iCopyright functions in terms of American copyright laws and not Canadian, but I want to know where they’ll draw the line. What exactly is the inappropriate use they want to protect their brand from? Is it available for commentary so long as it’s positive? Is it okay to just copy, paste and present? Hopefully we’ll see some clarity. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation signs up with weird American copyright bounty-hunters (BoingBoing) CBC and iCopyright – CBC responds (Cameron McMaster) CBC’s New Licensing System Causes Anger (Inside the CBC) [...]
“We’re not doing anything we haven’t always done. People can make use of excerpting or linking, that’s always been free of charge,” [...]. “But what we’re really doing and what we’ve always done is to protect our brand from inappropriate use.”
Can you please clarify this? It sounds like individuals are allowed to excerpt or link unless it’s a case of making inappropriate use of the CBC brand. I understand that maintaining brand standards is important, but I don’t understand how this relates to using the iCopyright software. Also, will an individual be given a takedown notice if their use is deemed inappropriate, or will a fine just immediately be given out? A fine of up to $1 million seems excessive when a post can simply be taken down.
For the curious, Tynt is a Canadian company, and you can gain a good understanding of what Tynt is doing for publishers by reading this article from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/07/measuring-reader-engagement-by-how-often-they-copy-and-paste/
Aren’t those fees a little high for non-profit websites?
I don’t understand all the fuss. Did someone rewrite copyright law when we weren’t looking? Otherwise, we never had the right to simple cut and paste the CBC’s web site onto our own. Link, sure. Excerpt appropriately for the purpose of fair dealing, sure. All this widget seems to be doing, though, is trying to monetize activity that we’d be legally required to pay the CBC to do anyway. What’s the big deal?
Why do Canadians have to pay for CBC articles when they have already paid to have those articles written through their tax dollars for public use and consumption. We own the CBC and they work for us. The CBC is not a “for profit” corporate entity and it should not act as one which is trying to compete with advertising dollar biased corporate media. I will be happy to see Harper disappear from the political scene come the next election when we can a get a new government in which will supports the CBC by sending more of our tax dollars their way instead of trying to kill it.
I agree with Cameron; it would be great if the CBC would consider providing their users with information on fair dealing. As it is, some of the information on their site is misleading.
One important feature of fair dealing is the non-requirement for individuals to ask permission from the copyright owner prior to using the material.
In the Permissions FAQ on the CBC’s website they limit fair dealing by making permission a requirement
http://www.cbc.ca/permissions/faq-text.html#1.
“May I quote from an article on your website? / May I use an excerpt from one of your articles?
Under certain circumstances, it is permissible to quote or take an excerpt from a CBC.ca article; however, prior permission is required before using any CBC.ca text in this manner. Please submit a Permissions request for our consideration. ”
(quote included without permission)
If permission were required as the CBC suggests, then fair dealing really isn’t an exception at all and it is meaningless to include the language in the Copyright Act. When people who may not be familiar with the law read the FAQ they may believe permission is manditory in all cases, when in reality, it is not.
I wrote to the CBC last summer by way of their online form and asked if they were aware of fair dealing and an individual’s right to quote and excerpt without permission. I asked them to revisit the information in their FAQ as their answer is misleading. Unfortunately, I did not receive a response.
Regarding Tynt Insight:
If you’re running Mac OSX or Linux or a UNIX-like…
1. Open a terminal.
2. Type the following
echo ’127.0.0.1 tcr.tynt.com’ >> /etc/hosts
Then press return.
3. Problem solved, globally.
This makes your computer look for tcr.tynt.com (the server with the JavaScript that makes this irritating thing work) on itself, where of course it does not exist.
Anne: you should probably not be logging in as root (apologies if you just left off the sudo).