Stop in the Name of the Supremes

The Supreme Court of Canada recently released an outrageously harmful ruling in a key case for Canadian copyright law. The court’s decision leaves Canada’s professional cultural workers with no workable legal remedies for protecting the value of their work.

I was engaged in this case for a decade. I testified at the original Federal Court trial, and intervened in both the lower court appeal and the Supreme Court appeals. Writers rights were protected by all lower courts in succession, until they were kneecapped and abandoned by the Supremes. It should not have happened that way. In my opinion, the SCC ruling was hasty, one-sided, ill-considered, and marred by the appearance of conflict. It damages Canada’s cultural sector and standing in the world, and it damages the reputation of the highest court.

For what? So universities won’t have to pay a $14.31 license fee when they copy published work. Such myopic nonsense.

I have many thoughts about the decision, and I let them flow in a very long Twitter thread you can access here:

Retain Your Rights, Even in the Academy

How academic authors can help themselves and the cause of author's rights by retaining their copyright, and demanding a royalty for the use of their work. The days of truly not-for-profit educational publishing are over, so why are you gifting your work to the academy?

Plus, a quick trip to Halifax and the intro to this year's Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture. Here's that lecture for you enjoyment: Writerstrust – Author-olive-senior-on-the-writing-life-margaret-laurence-lecture-2019

And here is Dr. Aileen Fyfe's blog post about academic publishing: blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsci…ut-open-research/

I want to thank my son, Fred Degen, for his help in editing and preparing this episode.

Canada Decides to Lead Again on Artists' Rights

Checking back in on an earlier episode in which I took you to Ottawa for Parliamentary testimony from The Writers’ Union of Canada in the matter of Canada’s copyright law review.

On May 15th 2019, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage released a report containing 22 key recommendations. The upshot of those 22 recommendations is that Canada’s lawmakers have accepted the invitation to value the work of those who produce our culture. They've decided to lead again on protecting artists' rights.

This is very good news. If incorporated into law, these recommendations will go a long way to rebuilding the cultural marketplace in Canada, a market eroded and pillaged by rampant free-riding in the digital space, and huge amounts of uncompensated copying in educational settings.

Jay Odjick on Illustration, Language Preservation, & Spectacularly Bad Advice

A short interview with author, illustrator and television producer Jay Odjick.

I first became aware of Jay on Twitter, through his wonderful series of Algonquin Word of the Day tweets in which he provides an illustrated word in the Algonquin language. Jay is an Algonquin artist from the Kitigan Zibi community in Quebec. Go find him right now on Twitter @JayOdjick

I sat down over Skype with Jay to talk about his latest success, which is his second illustration collaboration with popular children’s author Robert Munsch.

You can access this podcast on either Soundcloud, RadioPublic, Stitcher, the Apple podcasts app, or the Google Podcast app. You can find individual episodes through my own website at www.jkdegen.com/, and @bookroompod on Twitter. If you have suggestions for stories I might want to cover, you can reach out on Twitter or by e-mail at bookroom14@yahoo.com.

Image of the Algonquin Word of the Day courtesy Jay Odjick Shop.