Amounts Paid to Access Copyright by 37 Canadian Universities from 2011 to 2015, including Average Amounts per FTE

The Copyright Board has just issued an interesting procedural ruling dated October 25, 2016 in the Access Copyright (“AC”) Post-Secondary case. Essentially, in response to a request from the Board, AC wanted to file an exhibit containing certain information on revenues from certain universities from 2011-2015 on a confidential basis. The lone surviving intervenor, Mr. Sean Maguire, objected to the treatment of this information as confidential. The Board agreed with Mr. Maguire and further ruled that AC could not withdraw the exhibit in question. The Board’s ruling of October 25, 2016 gave AC until October 31, 2016 to “initiate any recourse that is sees fit”. 

AC, to its credit, or perhaps because it recognized the virtually certain futility  of any “recourse”, promptly indicated on October 26, 2016, that  it “does not intend to initiate any recourse regarding the Board's decision to deny the confidential designation of Exhibit AC-50D, We will now send Exhibit AC-50D to Mr. Maguire.”

So, this is now on the public record. Here is the spreadsheet of the amounts paid by 37 universities from 2011 – 2015, including FTE data and amounts paid per FTE.

This is a refreshing ruling from the Board, which has arguably too often in the past been too quick to treat as confidential information that should be on the public record. 

HPK