Publishing and the Digital Economy

• Author: José Borghino - Ben Steward
• Position: Secretary General - Director of Communications and Freedom to Publish, International Publishers Association (IPA)

Digital technology, with its new and enticing formats, has far extended the reach of book and journal publishing, allowing publishers to find more readers wherever they are and whenever they want to read.

At the heart of this global enterprise is copyright.

Copyright: the mainspring of any thriving publishing ecosystem

It is sometimes claimed that copyright is “broken” when it comes to digital offerings of copyrighted works. In reality, proponents of this idea want to weaken copyright through ever-expanding exceptions and limitations, both nationally and by means of international treaties. The real beneficiaries of exceptions and limitations for digital uses of copyright works will be big technology companies, whose prosperity depends overwhelmingly on hosting or delivering other people’s output. Those who work with copyright every day – authors, creators and publishers – know that copyright is flexible, robust and accommodating. It is the foundation and mainspring of a diverse and successful worldwide ecosystem of words, pictures, sounds and ideas that pervades our lives.

Yet, as pervasive and ubiquitous as it is, this ecosystem is as vulnerable to the well-organized misdeeds of pirates and free riders as it is to unwitting undermining by well-meaning agencies.

What not to do: lessons from Canada

An example is the recent amendment to Canada’s copyright laws, through the Copyright Modernization Act of 2012. The amendment expanded Canada’s existing fair dealing exceptions by adding “education” as a purpose that justifies unauthorized reproduction, distribution and other uses of copyrighted works. However, a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that the incomes of Canadian writers, authors and illustrators will fall as a result, driving people away from the sector and eliminating jobs. PwC also predict that inadequate rewards for authors and publishers producing educational material will cause “the publishing of new content for schools in Canada [to] for the most part, disappear”, with “lower competition, less content diversity, and higher prices for what is produced”.

Copyright… is the foundation and mainspring of a diverse and successful worldwide ecosystem of words, pictures, sounds and ideas that pervades our lives.

The results of this apparently minor legal amendment sound a warning about the harm that can be done by unpicking copyright law. Doing so has already ransacked Canadian educational publishing: Oxford University...