Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 06:20:07 -0700
Subject: Fwd: Theses for Sale / Question of Copyright




For those of you following this thread:


>Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency
>
>  For immediate release: Wednesday, August 23, 2000
>  Contentville agrees to take down Canadian academic dissertations
>
>  Contentville.com's vice-president, Stuart Jordan, has agreed to remove all
>Canadian academic dissertations and theses from the offerings on this
>  ecommerce website. Contentville is the new venture attempting to secure
>ranking as the premier purveyor of content on the Internet. In a meeting in
>New York this week with CANCOPY's Fred Wardle, Jordan agreed that Canadian
>academics have cause for concern since they were never given an opportunity
>to deny the use of their material in this way. The material is to be removed
>in the next few days.
>
>  Contentville claim to be, in their words: ... the Web's first store run
>  for and by people who love content -- whether it's in the form of books,
>  magazines, e-books, academic works, transcripts, archived articles,
>  scripts or anything else that qualifies as brain food. The venture has
>  raised concern by advertising the sale of some copyright materials in
>  which ownership is in question. Jonathan Tasini of the U.S. National
>  Writers' Union has brokered a potential agreement to ensure that U.S.
>  authors can be properly rewarded in these cases. CANCOPY is investigating
>ways in which they can serve Canadian rightsholders.
>
>  The U.S. National Writers' Union agreement calls for their members to
>  identify their works present on the Contentville site in which the member
>claims full ownership. These rights will be assigned to the NWU, who will
>collect and distribute a royalty payment from any Contentville sales. Any
>disputed rights will be held for future arbitration and settlement. This
>week, CANCOPY's Fred Wardle met with Tasini and Contentville's Jordan to
>discuss possible solutions for Canadian members of the copyright
>  collective. Meetings on procedures and rights identification are being
>  held amongst the parties. The CANCOPY licensing committee will then debate
>the issues prior to a final determination of CANCOPY's role by its board of
>directors.
>
>  The U.S. agreement calls for payment of a 30% royalty to the rightsholder
>of record, an amount seen as a major breakthrough by many U.S. writers
>accustomed to receiving little or no digital usage payment. The
>determination of ownership of databased materials, a current source of
>debate, and issues surrounding purveyors obtaining advance licensing
>approval, are underlined as outstanding questions in the digital
>distribution of intellectual property world. In the meantime, the proposed
>solution may provide a working model for an Internet content licensing
>regime.
>
>
>  for further information
>
>   Fred Wardle
>   Executive Director
>
>   CANCOPY
>   Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency
>   One Yonge Street, Suite 1900
>   Toronto, ON M5E 1E5   Canada
>
>   416-868-1620 ext. 226
>   Fax: 416-868-1621
>http://www.cancopy.com



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