Archives and C-32

[Michael McKinnie]

Candram colleagues,

As an additional piece of information to Dorothy Hadfield's posting
regarding C-32 and its potential impact on historical work in Canada, I've
included the following lengthy post from H-CANADA, the Canadian history
listserv.  It provides more up-to-date information on the status of bill
C-32, and the Canadian Historical Association/Societe Historique du Canada
intervention before the standing committee.  They have articulated a clear
position on the bill, and if you agree with it, you might want to support
their efforts by contacting the appropriate MP's and ministers.  From all
the stuff floating around, it sounds as though Sheila Copps has constructed
an artists versus scholars divide, so it might be useful for Canadian
theatre historians to emphasize the link between healthy Canadian theatre
scholarship and Canadian theatre practices.

This is, of course, only the legal access side of the coin.  As for the
financial access, that remains an important issue.

Michael



>Date:         Fri, 29 Nov 1996 12:27:54 -0600
>Reply-To: Dave De Brou <debrou at duke.usask.ca>
>Sender: H-Net List for Canadian History <H-CANADA at MSU.EDU>
>From: Dave De Brou <debrou at duke.usask.ca>
>Subject:      Question: CHA/ShC and/et C-32
>To: Multiple recipients of list H-CANADA <H-CANADA at MSU.EDU>
>
>From: miller at sask.usask.ca
>
>Dear friends on H-CANADA
>
>    I regret not being able to post information on developments in the
>Canadian Historical Association/Societe historique du Canada's campaign
>concerning Bill C-32 (copyright) before this. I did not return to my home
>base until two days ago, and I have been swamped with teaching and other
>responsibilities since then.
>
>    Please accept my apology for the delay in updating you. You will have
>seen, of course, that the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation has
>raised the alarm about more recent developments on the copyright front. I
>would like to comment briefly on both our experience and these recent
>developments, before appending our most recent intervention on the
>subject for your consideration (and, I hope, action).
>
>    When we appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage
>on 19 November, we received a warm, sympathetic, and encouraging hearing.
>The Chair, Liberal MP Clifford Lincoln, began by welcoming our
>delegation and assuring us that "Historians have a lot of friends." He
>went on to say that he and the Committee had heard from many of these
>"friends." I must have looked sceptical -- or, perhaps, just stunned --
>because at the beginning of the discussion that followed our presentation
>the BQ Vice-Chair, Gaston Leroux, reiterated the point that we had many
>friends, and that they had been heard from.
>
>    I take from this repeated report of widespread amicability that the
>FAXing and e-mailing that many of you did earlier got the attention of
>the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I want you to know that the
>CHA/SHC is very appreciative of your efforts, many of which you have
>thoughtfully copied to me. I hope eventually to respond to all these
>messages either electronically or by more conventional form. In the
>meantime, however, would you please accept this expression of gratitude?
>
>    To return to the Committee session on 19 November -- we left the
>hearing with the impression that the Committee would recommend insertion
>in the bill of a clause that we wanted, a clause that would make it clear
>that making a single copy for research or private study of an unpublished
>archival document in which copyright persisted was _not_ an infringement
>of copyright. I remained under that impression until late on the
>afternoon of 22 November when I learned in a telephone call to my Ottawa
>hotel that the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation had become aware
>that the ministers responsible (Copps and Manley) and the Committee might
>make drastic changes to the bill as a result of representations that they
>had received from the Writers' Union of Canada.
>
>   You will have seen earlier what the Federation is suggesting you do.
>And you will see (below) the position that the CHA/SHC has taken and the
>action it has requested. I hope that you will find yourselves persuaded
>to support our effort.
>
>   Before closing this part of the CHA/SHC message, I should like to make
>it clear that we do not wish to combat or harm the interests of creators
>of copyright material, including the Writers' Union of Canada.  As I say
>in my letter to Ms. Copps and Mr. Manley, many of the members of the
>CHA/SHC are writers whose works enjoy copyright, too. However, we are
>anxious on two points: that archival research not be impeded or made more
>expensive; and that the limited copying exemption of published work for
>research and educational purposes be retained. We do not think that
>creators' organizations would wish to impede archival research, and we do
>believe that the existing exemptions in the draft bill represent a
>reasonable balancing of the interests of creators and users of copyright
>material.
>
>   With the agreement and kind cooperation of the moderators of H-CANADA,
>our most recent representation on Bill C-32 follows:
>
>Jim Miller, President, Canadian Historical Association/Societe historique
>du Canada
>
>**********
>
>
>Dear Mr. Lincoln
>
>    On behalf of the Canadian Historical Association/Societe historique
>du Canada, I should like to thank you and your Committee for the
>courteous and sympathetic hearing you extended to us when we appeared
>before you on 19 November. (The delay in my writing has been occasioned
>by my absence from my home base until two days ago, and by my immersion
>in teaching and other duties since my return.)
>
>    We were appreciative of the interest that you took in our concerns
>about the way in which Bill C-32, no doubt unintentionally, would have a
>disastrous impact on the archival research that the members of CHA/SHC
>do. We were encouraged by the impression that we gained that your
>Committee would recommend an addition to Section 30 along the lines we
>outlined during our presentation.
>
>    We have been alarmed to learn more recently that there is some
>prospect that a number of important exemptions concerning research and
>teaching activities might be eliminated from the Bill before it returns
>to the House of Commons. For that reason, I have sent the following
>letter to Hon. Sheila Copps, and the Hon. John Manley. The CHA/SHC is
>asking them and your Committee to ensure that these limited, vital
>exemptions are not removed.
>
>    Our letter to Ms. Copps and Mr. Manley follows:
>
>Dear Ms. Copps/Mr. Manley:
>
>    I write on behalf of the Canadian Historical Association/Societe
>historique du Canada [CHA/SHC] concerning Bill C-32. The CHA/SHC is a
>nation-wide group of some 1500 people from a variety of walks of life,
>the common feature of whom is an interest in history. While all fields of
>history are represented in our ranks, most of our members are students,
>teachers, and researchers of the history of Canada.
>
>    The CHA/SHC membership contains both consumers and creators of
>copyright material. We include student, faculty, and public researchers
>who make widspread use of both published and unpublished materials in our
>work. Some of us are teachers at the secondary or postsecondary level who
>also make use of copyright material for classroom instruction. And many
>of us are also published scholars whose works of history enjoy the
>protection of copyright.
>
>   As a collectivity that represents both creators and users of copyright
>material, the CHA/SHC recognizes that many aspects of the pending
>copyright legislation, Bill C-32, are improvements over what now exists.
>As an organization we tend to agree with the Association of Universities
>and Colleges of Canada, which some time ago pronounced Bill C-32 a
>reasonable compromise between the interests of creators and consumers.
>
>   Accordingly, we have been alarmed to learn recently that there is a
>chance that the limited exemptions provided for photoreproducing material
>in libraries for research and private study might be stripped from the
>legislation. We wish to object to this possibility and to request that
>you retain the reasonableness and compromise of the measure as it was
>down to 20 November or thereabouts.
>
>   The Canadian Historical Association/Societe historique du Canada also
>wishes to take this opportunity to reiterate the point that it made -- a
>point that appeared to elicit considerable sympathy and support -- when it
>appeared as a witness before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage
>on 19 November. We consider it absolutely vital to the future of archival
>research of the kind carried out by historians, genealogists, lawyers,
>land-claims researchers, journalists, and others that an exemption be
>added to the legislation -- perhaps immediately after the existing Section
>30.1 -- to this effect:
>
>    _It is not an infringement of copyright for a library, archive or
>    museum or a person acting under the authority of a library, archive
>    or museum to make a single copy for the purpose of research or private
>    study of a copyright work or other subject-matter, whether published or
>    unpublished, in its permanent collection._
>
>   It is peculiarly ironic that in 1996, of all years, legislation is
>being contemplated that would make non-profit archival research in
>unpublished materials much more difficult and expensive. This year, as
>Margaret Atwood pointed out in her Bronfman Canadian Studies Lecture at
>the University of Ottawa on 20 November, the historical novel is enjoying
>special prominence and success. In addition to her own work, _Alias
>Grace_, which won the Giller Prize, this year we also have Guy
>Vanderhaeghe's _The Englishman's Boy_, which was the English-language
>fiction winner in the Governor General's Awards. Both these important
>titles are, of course, works that belong in one fashion or another to the
>genre of historical fiction. It is doubtful that novelists like Atwood or
>Vanderhaeghe -- or researchers and archivists or librarians working on
>their behalf -- would be able to carry out the research on an Upper
>Canadian murder or the Cypress Hills Massacre that is vital to the
>writers' brilliant realizations without great inconvenience and expense
>if Bill C-32 is not amended as the CHA/SHC has requested.
>
>  The Canadian Historical Association/Societe historique du Canada urges
>you and the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to ensure that Bill
>C-32 has protections for limited photocopying for research and private
>study of unpublished archival materials, and that the reasonable
>compromise for educational photocopying that has been part of Bill C-32
>is maintained.
>
>   Thank you very much.
>
>
>                                              Yours truly
>
>                                              Jim Miller
>                                              President
>                                              CHA/SHC

--
Michael McKinnie
Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama
Northwestern University
m-mckinnie at nwu.edu