Canadian Publications using American iCopyright

For a while now, the news industry has been trying to find an effective way to gain more profit, considering a lot of their readers are online now. The CBC, The Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star are all using a new copyright licensing service called iCopyright. This is an American service based out of Seattle.

The Torontoist explained how iCopyright works:

If you want to print an article from your printer, just click the little print icon beside any story, and an iCopyright window pops up asking you how many copies you'd like to make. Printing is free, as long as you're making fewer than six copies. If you want to print six or more, iCopyright asks you to pay per article. The system works the same way if you're trying to email an article, and it can also be used to quickly purchase republication rights.

(read the rest here)

But apparently, it isn't hard to bypass this system. The big problem here is: this is an American copyright license.

According to the Facebook group against CBC using iCopyright, "iCopyright offers a reward of up to $1,000,000 for snitching on bloggers who don't pay Danegeld to Canada's public broadcaster to quote the works they funded."

CBC has now answered questions about iCopyright to put citizens' minds at ease. But there are still some unanswered questions/concerns.

Read more regarding this issue at Cameron McMaster's blog, who is an independent media policy researcher.