Fee dispute spurs copyright lawsuit

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This article was published 17/03/2018 (3107 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada’s provincial and territorial education ministries (excluding Quebec) are suing Canadian copyright holders for $27.5 million to get back money paid in 2010-2012 for copying protecting material.

The lawsuit is part of a long dispute between the education sector and the agency Access Copyright, which collects and distributes fees for copying protected work. The education sector has interpreted the 2012 federal copyright law as giving it the power to make copies for free under what is known as “fair dealing.”

In response to the latest salvo in the battle, the president of the Association of Canadian Publishers said: “We have no choice but to interpret this suit as the intimidating action that it is.”

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A Lakota poet’s response to the 2009 Congressional resolution of apology to Native Americans has won the US$75,000 PEN America Jean Stein book of the year award.

Layli Long Soldier’s book Whereas, published by Greywolf Press, was described by the judges as “a grand reckoning with language and history.”

Other authors honoured last month included poet and essayist Jenny Zhang, for her debut short story collection Sour Heart, and the late Ursula K. Le Guin for No Time to Spare, her collection of writings on aging, politics and literature.

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Ottawa author Amal El-Mohtar is now the science fiction and fantasy columnist for the New York Times book review section.

Her first Otherworldly column appeared in the paper on Feb. 22, a few months after U.S. border control agents at Ottawa’s airport held her up for 12 hours en route to a New York writers’ retreat. The agents detained her and searched her belongings, causing her to miss her flight to the retreat.

By the new year, her border crossing problem appeared resolved, and she attended a science fiction and fantasy convention in Michigan and another event in Washington, D.C. El-Mohtar is a two-time Nebula Award finalist whose work has been published in a collection entitled The Honey Month.

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A small Canadian publisher is paying its female authors double royalties this month. Invisible Publishing, best known for Giller-nominated titles How to Get Along With Women by Elisabeth de Mariaffi and I Am a Truck by Michelle Winters, is boosting royalties for copies of books sold through the company’s website.

Publisher Leigh Nash says “We wanted to do something to celebrate International Women’s Day that would actually make a difference for our writers.”

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A science writer with a master’s degree in neuroscience mines the minds of violent men in Mad Blood Stirring: The Inner Lives of Violent Men.

Daemon Fairless, a former producer for CBC’s As It Happens, discusses his book Monday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

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Winnipeg literary magazines Contemporary Verse 2 and Prairie Fire join forces Wednesday at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location to celebration National Poetry Day.

Hosted by CV2’s Clarise Foster, the celebration features Marilyn Dumont, a faculty member at University of Alberta and author of four award-winning poetry collections. Dumont’s best-known work, A Really Good Brown Girl, has gone through 15 printings.

Joining her are Manitoba poets Hannah Green and Chelsea Peters. The celebration begins at 7:30 p.m.

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Tom Rachman’s first novel, 2010’s The Imperfectionists, is a tragicomedy set in a fictionalized Rome-based English language newspaper, and was an international bestseller translated into 25 languages.

The Canadian former journalist returns to similar territory in The Italian Teacher, the story of a failed painter and writer who finds work teaching Italian and tries to live up to the genius of his painter father. Rachman reads from the novel Wednesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

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