CBC & iCopyright

<a href=”http://www.michaelgeist.ca/”>Michael Geist,  Cory Doctorow and Cameron McMaster have recently spoken out about the CBC integrating with iCopyright, described by Doctorow as “the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press.” Doctorow also says:

iCopyright offers “licenses” to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author. Thanks for fostering a dialogue, CBC!

(I would quote McMaster’s original article but he appears to have taken it down.)

The CBC has responded to these criticisms on their blog.

A few weeks ago the CBC introduced a licensing system that allows users to legally post all of parts of CBC News 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.”

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)

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