Laura J. Murray: An Act to Discourage Learning

Laura J. Murray: An Act to Discourage Learning

Since I’m always going on about copyright law being too important to leave to the lawyers, it’s been heartening to see smart and active Canadians explaining how Bill C-61 would adversely affect their work. Genealogist John Reid points out, for example, that whereas now, researchers can presume that the subject of a formal portrait owned the rights, and that those rights expired 50 years after the photo was taken, C-61 makes the photographer the owner, and the term last until 50 years after his or her death. That makes miles of uncertainty for archivists and researchers. Photographs, unlike books, don’t have a “Cataloguing in Publication” page stating who made them. Even if we do know who the photographer is, how are we supposed to figure out when he died? Since C-61 is silent on reform of orphan works, researchers will be prevented from using a lot of old and rich archival material.