Over the course of this last week, we've heard a lot of testimony that seems to colour the discussion, not so much as a balancing of interests, but as a battle between users and creators.
For instance, earlier today, we've heard from Mr. Lorimer of the Canadian Association of Learned Journals, and he shared with us a very colourful comparison, saying that we can provide all sorts of resources to students for the price of a single case of beer.
What I think this analogy misses is that a lot of the content that we may copy has actually already been paid for by us, for instance, through licences. The analogy quickly becomes more akin to buying that case of beer and then having to pay the exact same price for drinking a single bottle from that case. Not to mention the fact that if we do remove the fair dealing exception, the educational context, we're removing it for all sorts of content. For example, sometimes we would like to share with our students a small portion of a larger work for which the publisher has set an unreasonably high price. So if you permit me to stretch the metaphor even further, I don't think it would be an efficient use of public funds to buy an entire case of wine when all you need is a single bottle, or worse yet, to deprive students of such a fine beverage.
Thank you.