Auditor general's office says it's OK to link to, but not host, its reports

TORONTO - The office of Canada's auditor general says it's perfectly OK - and much appreciated - if websites link to reports on its government site, but warns they should not be hosted elsewhere.

Advocates for copyright reform expressed concern Thursday when the auditor general's office demanded the Globe and Mail newspaper remove a copy of a report that had been attached to one of its online articles.

The Globe was displaying the report with a web application called Scribd, which allows large documents to be embedded on a web page without the need for an external program like Adobe Reader.

It also keeps readers on the same web page, rather than sending them off to another site to read the document.

Beth Stewart, a lawyer for the office of auditor general Sheila Fraser, said the document was ordered off Scribd's servers because of concerns with the website's terms of use.

It was her understanding that users of Scribd documents are permitted to alter the files and use them in other ways, Stewart said.

A spokeswoman for Fraser said it's the first time the office has had to deal with the issue of government documents being hosted by others.

"Right now, it's the opinion of our lawyers that it's not an acceptable arrangement," said Susan Wheeler.

"It hasn't been a big issue up until now. If it becomes (a big issue), I suppose we could consider our stand on that but at the moment, it's the first time that it's happened."

A Scribd spokeswoman said documents should only be posted to its site by proper copyright holders. Scribd is no longer hosting the report.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, said Canadians should be free to make use of government documents online.

Limiting how documents can be posted runs afoul of the spirit of the auditor general's own work to make government actions more transparent, he said.

The federal government should be adopting the Creative Commons licensing standard, he added, which allows users to use or post copyrighted documents for non-commercial purposes.

"The government should lead by example by adopting open licenses that do not require prior permission for most uses, as many other countries have done," Geist said.

A lawyer for the Globe was not immediately available for comment.