The federal NDP put forth a Private Member’s Bill, Bill C-440, that proposes to abolish Crown copyright in Canada. The Copyright Act Section 12 currently states:
Where copyright belongs to Her Majesty
12. Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown, where any work is, or has been, prepared or published by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or any government department, the copyright in the work shall, subject to any agreement with the author, belong to Her Majesty and in that case shall continue for the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and for a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year.
For comparison, the US government generally puts all federal government works in the US public domain. Those works were paid for with American public money so the American public should have free access to them.
Canada is the opposite. The Canadian government copyrights almost everything it produces and it produces a huge number of documents, periodicals, research papers, maps and much more.
Another problem is that since 2013(?) each federal department and agency can have its own copyright policy. For example: National Defence, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, and Transport Canada.
Canada does offer an Open Government Licence for some material.
How might this affect photographers?
Abolishing Crown copyright seems to be a good idea but can it negatively affect photographers?
If Crown copyright is abolished, photographers might be forced to always give up copyright so that the work can be put in the public domain. Although I’ve found that most government photo assignments over the past 15 years have required a complete transfer of copyright.
If you licence existing work to the government, there might be a risk of your work being put in the public domain either intentionally or accidentally.
But this may be a moot point because Private Member’s Bills aren’t usually successful unless a member of the governing party supports the bill. We also have a federal election in five months and this proposed bill will die on the order paper.
Please check the date of this article because it contains information that may become out of date. Tax regulations, sales tax rules, copyright laws and privacy laws can change from time to time. Always check with proper government sources for up-to-date information.
