Writer Heather Robertson, who championed copyrights of her freelance colleagues, dies at 72

Photo by Aaron Marshall

Heather Robertson, the Canadian magazine writer and author died Wednesday on her 72nd birthday. 

Her colleagues  and freelancers everywhere owe her an enormous debt of gratitude, particularly since she was the lead plaintiff in two long-running suits over the electronic rights of writers. These settled that newspapers and periodicals could not appropriate writers' work and publish them on databases without credit or payment. 

The magazine industry recognized her in 2012 with its highest honour,the National Magazine Awards Foundation's award for outstanding achievement. 

In a 40-year career, she wrote for most of Canada's best magazines, including Saturday Night, Equinox, Elm Street, Toronto Life, Chatelaine, Canadian Forum, Canada's History, Weekend, The Canadian and Maclean's. 

Her close friend Elaine Dewar summed up Robertson's life in this way. 

"She was an early bestselling author of Canadian non fiction books (Reservations Are for Indians and Salt of the Earth are two early works that found large audiences.) Early in her career she was a very well read and controversial columnist for Maclean's, as well as a writer of well reported and beautifully written feature stories for most of the magazines in the country.    

"She was also a co-founder of various writers' organizations including the Periodical Writers' Association of Canada , and The Writer's Union of Canada, and helped talk the Canada Council into recognizing non fiction writing as an art form." 

In Robertson v. Thomson, which reached the Supreme Court in 2006, Robertson brought suit in a class action on behalf of freelance writers whose work was being reproduced on certain electronic databases without permission or reimbursement. In May 2009, a settlement of more than $11-million was awarded to the writers involved in what is and was one of the most important copyright cases in Canadian history. A similar suit,Robertson v. ProQuest et al., was settled in 2011 with additional compensation. In all it took almost 14 years to prevail, during which Robertson was steadfast as the figurehead and spokesperson.

Related posts:

• Freelancers start receiving settlement cheques from Robertson copyright class action suit
• Final settlement in class action suit preferable to drawn out trial, says Heather Robertson
• Two settlements down, one to go in the Robertson copyright class action
• Long-running freelance suit against publishers settled for $11 million

U of T and Western back out of paying royalties to writers and publishers for copying

Two of Canada's leading universities -- University of Toronto and Western -- are walking away from a 20-year relationship with Access Copyright, the copyright licensing agency. And the Professional Writers Association of Canada is livid about it. As is The Writers' Union of Canada. Essentially, the decision means that the two schools will no longer pay a collective royalty fee to creators through an Access license; in fact it may mean they will pay nothing. 

The two schools had settled with AC in January 2012 and signed a licensing agreement, which was thought to provide a model for other schools to follow. Apparently minds have changed.   

“They seem to have been persuaded by the most fanatical ideologues in their midst that the recent reform of copyright law in Canada gives them free rein to copy at will without any regard for the realities of the marketplace”, said PWAC president Michelle Greysen. “Unfortunately this devaluation of creativity will lead to the general impoverishment of Canada’s knowledge base. As frontline knowledge workers, Canadian writers cannot accept this direction. We are looking at legal options up to and including mounting a class action suit against the universities for infringing upon our economic rights.”

A PWAC press release elaborates

We realize that digital technology has changed in education. But the fact that it is easier to reproduce text and images because they have been reduced to ones and zeros does not mean that the process of creation — the sweat and inspiration and hard critical analysis that goes into professional writing — can be reduced to zero in terms of compensation for the widespread use of a given piece of writing, be it a textbook, a poem or a piece of investigative journalism. Universities don’t provide any other services without paying for them — why should content be free?

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Supreme Court copyright decision does not unleash a "free for all", says Access Copyright

Access Copyright, the Canadian copyright licensing agency, says while it is concerned about yesterday's Supreme Court decision about photocopying in elementary and secondary schools, the decision leaves blanket licensing of hard copy and digital materials in schools intact.

"The fact is the Supreme Court was only looking at about seven percent of the copying done in schools,” Maureen Cavan, Executive Director, Access Copyright, said in a statement emailed to media and posted on its website. "The decision absolutely does not mean a free-for-all on copyright-protected materials used in the classroom. On the contrary, it leaves copyright licensing in the education sector alive and well."

The Supreme Court decision did not pass judgement on whether the copying was "fair" under the terms of the Copyright Act, leaving that determination to the Copyright Board. By referring the case back to the board, the court left it to decide whether the ruling changes the terms of the tariff it granted to Access. 

Universities and Access Copyright sign agreement governing use of printed and digital content

After years of acrimony and long negotiation, Access Copyright has signed a model license with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC). It means Canadian universities can now reproduce copyright protected materials in both print and digital formats while fairly compensating publishers and creators for the works they are using. Previously, Access licenses had largely been related to photocopied and scanned material, but things had changed dramatically with the growth of digitization.

The agreement, which will be in place December 31 and will renew automatically for one-year terms, provides that over the next six months, a survey methodology will be designed to assess the type and volume of usage so that Access can distribute royalties fairly. According to a joint press release

The model licence will see universities pay Access Copyright a royalty of $26.00 per full-time equivalent student annually.  This royalty includes what used to be a separate 10 cents per page royalty for coursepack copying, so there will no longer be a separate royalty for such copying.  

Paul Davison, president of the AUCC said

“We believe that this negotiated agreement provides the best possible outcome for universities, their students and faculty. It provides long-term certainty on price, and access to a new range of digital materials. Most importantly, the agreement respects the principles of academic freedom and privacy that are important to universities, and ensures that the administrative burden on institutions is minimized.”

Maureen Cavan, the executive director of Access Copyright said

“The licence provides easy, legal access to copyright protected works for students, professors and staff, in a simple, fast and cost efficient manner.”

Access Copyright is a not-for-profit collective licensing organization that collects royalties for copying and use of intellectual property and disburses it to publishers and creators, both in Canada and on behalf of foreign rights holders. 
Access  had been in a frustrating and drawn-out dispute with universities and colleges over its wish to have an omnibus agreement covering both copying and digital use. Access was asking the Canadian Copyright Board to impose a tariff -- as much as $45 a student -- a blended fee that would replace a hodge-podge of flat fee and per-page royalties which had grown up over the years, ranging from $3.38 to over $200 per student. 
Universities were essentially arguing that the collective licensing was redundant and that there should be a pay-per-use model,  one in which schools or individual faculty members would be responsible for clearing rights themselves, something which Access said impossible to manage and a virtual invitation for wholesale copyright infringement. 

Western and U of T settle with Access Copyright on annual fee covering print and digital copyright

Two of Canada's A-list universities -- Western and University of Toronto -- have settled with Access Copyright on a licensing agreement to reproduce copyright-protected material in both digital and print format. The deal is that each will pay Access Copyright $27.50 per full-time student annually to cover reproduction of copyright material for student use. The fee is less than Access is seeking in tariff negotiations at the Canadian Copyright Board, but does cover digital use and does put an end -- at least for these two leading schools -- to a contentious dispute over fair compensation for creators of written and visual material used by students.

“We welcome this opportunity to work in partnership with Western and U of T” said Maureen Cavan, executive director of Access Copyright. “The education and publishing industries depend on one another. An agreement that provides for usage of content, fair compensation to those that provide the content, with rules that favour sustainability, is in the interest of all players” said Ms. Cavan.

 The agreement is back-dated to cover digital uses not covered by previous agreements and will be used until 2013, with an automatic annual renewal. A method is being explored to assess and sample the actual amount of copying  being done of copyrighted materials to assist in setting the royalty in following years.

“This agreement gives us a convenient, comprehensive way to share content digitally and in paper form from a repertoire of millions of publications,” said Janice Deakin, provost and vice‐president (academic) at Western. “The backdating of the agreement gives us peace of mind by covering past digital uses that may have exposed the university and the indemnity provision increases the university’s legal protection against copyright  infringement.”

Last fall, the Copyright Board rejected attempts by Canadian universities and colleges to force transactional, pay-per-use licenses rather than comprehensive licenses that had gone before. At issue, among other things, was the use of digital copying, never contemplated or covered by previous tariffs. And Access argued that the pay-per-use model (without any means to monitor or track it) was an invitation for copyright violation. Higher education and Access have been working under (and arguing over) the terms of an interim tariff, pending the conclusion of a drawn-out Copyright Board process to settle on a permanent tariff. The interim tariff gives permission for day-to-day copying by instructors, students and administrators; production of paper coursepacks; and the option to make digital copies. Access's principal role is to collect the fees and distribute them to the creators.

Did the National Post plagiarize itself?

Blogger, poet, copyright maven John Degen points out on his blog that the National Post ran an editorial on October 27 that was a virtual copy of an op-ed column in the paper by one of its staff writers, Jesse Kline, from the day before.

"There are no less that 24 sentences that are wholly or partially in common between the two "original" pieces [Degen says]".

He notes the baffling irony of a mainstream paper choosing to attack "established old media players". But cutting and pasting? And about copyright? How weird and lame is that?

Staff-written magazine archives can be repackaged and re-sold as "collections"

A new revenue opportunity may be open to magazines which can repackage their archival material into iPad-only collections, according to a story about The New Yorker, published by Reuters. At the Ballpark, a collection of staff-written baseball writing from 1929 to 2011, features John Updike, David Grann and the inimitable Roger Angell. The revenue came from sponsorship by United Airlines. There was also sponsored golf and "sustainability" collections.

"Nearly all of these pieces are timeless, just waiting to be rediscovered," writes Felix Salmon. "And the New Yorker’s archives are so deep, and are of such high quality, that there’s really no limit to how many of these things it can produce. Each one is very cheap to put out — just cobble together a bunch of articles under a theme, and get a TNY writer to pen a short introduction. Meanwhile, the advertisers get to align themselves with popular or trendy subjects (golf, “sustainability”), and reach an audience which is affluent even by New Yorker standards."

One of the things that Salmon doesn't address is non-staff written content. Today, magazine publishers strong-arm freelance writers to obtain "all rights" (usually for the same price as one-time rights); but previous to that, most archives of most magazines consist of material that was bought on a first rights basis and reverted to the writers afterwards. For magazines in that position, there is a lot of paperwork (and expense) getting the rights to package such archival material.

The copyright bill watcher's field guide

With the retabling of federal copyright legislation, poet and writer John Degen has posted a fact sheet and list of Do's and Dont's for people thinking about this legislation. Most of the attention seems to be being paid to digital locking provisions, but there is so much more that should concern and alarm writers and publishers. A few of each of Degen's observations:

Don’t assume that if some fair dealing is good, more fair dealing will be great – The pressure is on by so called user-rights activists to endlessly expand the fair dealing provision within the Copyright Act. More pernicious than just the adding of new categories to fair dealing (see C-11’s new “Education” category) is the free-culture movement’s desire to take logical, established category definitions and make them so vague (again, see “Education”) that just about any use will fall under them. Fair Dealing was designed as a necessarily limited provision for use. If we remove the limits, we terminally weaken copyright. I am hoping for clarifying amendments in the fair dealing section of C-11.

Do share – The Internet’s impact on the sharing of culture is indisputable. Never has it been easier for creators and cultural professionals to get their work out there and gather audience and/or readers around it. I think we should all be experimenting as boldly and fearlessly as we can with new business models for cultural distribution, but always with a firm grasp on our rights.

Don’t confuse actual sharing with forced-sharing (also known as taking) – Any three-year old knows the difference between wanting to share and being forced to share. Free-culture businesses such as Google and YouTube are making billions of dollars selling advertising on top of freely shared content. Fair enough. But when the sharing is forced (Google Books, YouTube “mash-ups” that go far beyond fair dealing) then copyright has been ignored. Don’t give in to this often intentional conflation.

Do love schools and libraries – the cultural sector has always been and should always be the strongest supporters of and partners with education and libraries. I recommend all creators and cultural professionals volunteer their time and content as much as they can in both libraries and schools.

Don’t let this love turn you into a content doormat – Sometimes love hurts. Such is the case right now when a Canadian cultural collective (Access Copyright) finds itself having to fight the misguided free-culture impulses of some of our traditional partners. This goes back to the difference between sharing and taking. The universities and colleges currently refusing to negotiate with Access Copyright want to continue to use Canadian creative content without having to pay for it. This is not about a fantastic professor you know inviting you to speak in her classroom and not having the budget to pay you; this is about extraordinarily well-financed post-secondary institutions wanting to cut collective licensing out of their expense lines altogether.

Degan is the literature officer for the Ontario Arts Council, but is careful always to state that his views are his own and not of his employer, the OAC.

Freelancers start receiving settlement cheques from Robertson copyright class action suit

Cheques have gone out to, and some have already been received by, Canadian freelancers as part of the settlement in one part of the long-running class action suit Robertson v. Thomson Corp. et al. The total paid out will be about $5.5 million, following deductions for professional fees and other court authorized distributions, with freelance writers receiving varying amounts depending on the number of articles that they published with the Globe and Mail and other defending publications.

This payout represented the first of three disbursements that will eventually be made in the decade-long action, fronted by freelancer Heather Robertson (see earlier stories listed below.) The essence of the suit was that the defendants repurposed or sold freelance articles for which they had only paid one-time rights, without the freelancers' permission or appropriate compensation.

The settlement of this part of the case was approved by the Superior Court of Ontario on August 12, 2009 and defendants in the case agreed to pay $11 million.These included the Thomson Corporation (now, the Thomson Reuters Corporation), Thomson Canada Limited (now, Thomson Reuters Canada Limited), Thomson Affiliates and Information Access Company (now, The Gale Group, Inc.) and Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. (now, CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.). Over 350 Canadian publications were cited in the case, including The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Canadian Geographic, Toronto Life and now defunct Saturday Night magazine.

In November it was announced that a second part of the action had been settled with defendants  for $5.475 million with Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd., Rogers Publishing Limited, CEDROM-SNi Inc., ProQuest Information and Learning LLC. A separate deal was announced with Canwest in June as a precursor to the sale of the company.

According to a posting on the site of the lawyers for Robertson, the settlement stipulates that a writer can recover up to a maximum of 1% of this amount, which is estimated at $55,000.

Related posts:

• Final settlement in class action suite preferable to drawn-out trial, says Heather Robertson
• The last part of long-running Robertson class action tentatively settled for $5.475 million
• Two settlements down, one to go in the Robertson class action
• Robertson suit settlement goes to court for approval June 16
• PWAC hails settlement of rights suit as "a great achievement"
• Long-running freelance suit against publishers settled for $11 million 
• Robertson decision explained, more or less 
• What's what in the Heather Robertson case
• Robertson wins groundbreaking freelance suite after more than a decade of struggle 
• Robertson vs Globe gets to high court

Writers' Union video pushes back against proposed copyright changes

The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC) with the assistance of ACCESS Copyright (of which TWUC is a member) is distributing a video featuring five prominent Canadian writers talking about the perils of bill C-32, which is intended to amend the Copyright Act. Specifically, TWUC and others are alarmed that educational institutions, including colleges and universities, will be exempted from having to pay license fees for the copying of published works. A press release is also being widely distributed and TWUC says it is hoping to see the video go viral.

The video features five prominent authors [says an e-mail sent out to ACCESS Copyright board members], including two-time Governor General’s Award winner Nino Ricci, and builds awareness on how Bill C-32 and the education exceptions will hurt Canadian writers' ability to make a living.

“Without strong copyright protections, professional writing in this country will be irreparably harmed,” says novelist Alan Cumyn and author of the video. “Thousands of authors and artists across the country have been writing their MPs, protesting parts of this bill. This video puts faces and voices to our concerns.”

Also featuring in the video are Canadian writers Erna Paris, Sandra Campbell and Susan Swan.

 

We took the clips, and so what? say Conservatives, citing "fair dealing"

The Conservative Party, whose minority government is doggedly pressing along on  reform of copyright law in this country, has shown its true colours in defence of recent television attack ads including clips lifted from the CBC. Its views should give pause even to those who think they're on the right track with proposed changes to copyright law. It probably sends a shudder through those who fear the outcome of those changes.

In the face of a letter from the CBC to all political parties saying it was wrong for anyone to use such material in political ads, the Conservative Party maintains that its use without permission, or even without asking, is "fair dealing" and cites the use of similar C-SPAN footage from the U.S. in its 2009 attack ads. The story was reported this afternoon on the CBC and is available on its website. 

“The American public affairs channel C-SPAN allowed fair use of a similar clip of Michael Ignatieff in a 2009 Conservative Party campaign,” a Tory spokesman said. “It determined that the clip at issue was freely available and in use, as is the CBC’s material....We take the position today that C-SPAN took in 2009: our ads fall within the fair dealing provisions in copyright law.”

In Canada, "fair dealing" as defined by the Copyright Act is more restrictive than the "fair use" provisions in the United States. For instance, in the U.S. if you using footage for educational purposes, you don't need to seek or receive permission; in Canada, public perfomance rights need to be obtained. And, to boot, C-SPAN gave permission, which the CBC wasn't even asked for.

The use of such footage for partisan political purposes can hardly be considered "fair dealing"; these guys aren't quoting a passage in a book review, for heavens sakes. They're appropriating footage from a public broadcaster in order to savage their opponents. That should concern all of us, in print, online, on TV or in any form of expression.

Creators coalition takes out full-page ad demanding changes to C-32 copyright bill

In a last ditch attempt to influence the outcome of current discussions about C-32, amending Canada's copyright legislation, a coalition of organizations representing creators' groups have paid for a full-page ad in the first section of today's Globe and Mail.The open letter addressed to Tony Clement and Heritage Minister James Moore is signed by dozens of Canadian writers and artists. 

The ad is underwritten by the Canadian Authors Association, the League of Canadian Poets, the Writers' Union of Canada, the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Literary Translators Association of Canada and the Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers.

It says the draft law expropriates income that sustains Canadian writers and artists and threatening to provoke years of expensive litigation.  (The coalition's is critical of the inclusion of "education" in the "fair use" provisions, which would effectively exempt educational institutions from copying books and articles, although that's not the only one of problems it identifies.)

The ad calls on supporters to e-mail and write the special Parliamentary commitee on C-32 demanding changes to the law and to go to Copyrightgetitright for further information. The central, boldfaced message of the ad is:

"The legislation is unacceptable. There's still a chance to do the right thing. There's still a chance to get copyright right. Don't do it for us. Do it for Canada."

Quebec Assembly sides with writers and demands major changes to proposed copyright bill

The National Assembly in Quebec has unanimously adopted a motion opposing key aspects of the federal proposal, Bill C-32, for the amendment of copyright, according to a release from the National Association of Book Publishers  of Quebec (ANEL). The text of the motion roughly reads (apologies for my translation):

"That the National Assembly recognizes the crucial role of content creators and the importance of IP [intellectual property] in the economic model of arts and culture in Quebec;
"It endorse the concerns of the arts, especially music and literary publishing, and asks the federal government to change the current Bill C-32 as it involves authors rights to assure Quebec creators of full recognition of their rights, adequate protection against illegal copying of their works, application of the principle of private copying, and therefore ensuring income to the value of their intellectual property. "

ANEL welcomed the motion, which aligns with its continuing criticism of the bill and its call for nothing less than major revisions before it is passed. If adopted as presented, it said, the bill would result in the loss of 3,000 jobs and $20 million in annual royalties to Quebec writers, thereby compromising their ability to create new works. 

This decision, with the Quebec assembly siding with the view of many writers may mean that the federal government will have no choice but to re-examine its options. 

[Thanks to Ken McGoogan]

Quote, unquote: Keeping copyright law simple and understandable

A serious flaw with Bill C-61 was its undue complexity. Parliament should avoid over-drafting technical rules with labyrinth exceptions and complex conditions and counter-exceptions. The law should be broadly understandable. As the roles of users and creators converge, Canadians will want to consistently engage in fair copyright practices. But respect for the law is eroded by the long cryptic passages that dwell on technical details and contain rules, exceptions, conditions and counter exceptions as in Bill C-61. It is encouraged by adopting understandable principles that can be applied in practice.

-- Sam Trosow, a professor of law and information and media studies at the University of Western Ontario, writing on his blog about Canada's proposed copyright and fair dealing law.  (Reported in Digital and Scholarly blog)

Creative industries band together with statement on copyright opposing "fair use"

Some 45 organizations in Canada representing the creative industries have submitted a joint statement to the current federal consultation process on copyright reform, asking the government not to implement the concept of "fair use". The stance, not surprisingly, runs counter to the position taken by many of the advocates of fair use.

The signatories include such magazine-related organizations as Magazines Canada, the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) and Société de développement des périodiques culturels québécois (SODEP), Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency and the Canadian Freelance Union. Other organizations represent the book, music and games industries.

The paper essentially asks for a continuation of the longstanding "fair dealing" provisions now included in the Copyright Act and asks that the government reject calls for changing this to "fair use" or an "expanded" fair dealing definition that would create an open-ended system leaving copyright holders guessing about the junction between their right to be compensated for their work and the right of users to download, copy or sample the work without payment.

"'Fair use' has been described as an 'astonishingly bad' system amounting to little more than 'the right to hire a lawyer' [said the statement] "Fair use and/or expanded fair dealing systems are models that many of our trading partners including the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand have expressly rejected."

Fair use would lead to uncertainty, increased litigation, and reduce revenue available to creators and the Canadian creative industries, the submission said. It would also make collective licensing more difficult, if not impossible, as practiced by more than three dozen organizations in Canada (for instance, royalties charged by music publishers or for photocopying of printed works). And it could possibly invalidate current levies on media and photocopying that are imposed to pay royalties to Canadian copyright holders.

Newspaper publishers band together to control use of, payment for content

Newspaper publishers in the U.S. are hoping that a consortium approach will allow them to control -- and be compensated for -- the use of their content. According to a story in Editor & Publisher magazine, more than 1,000 publishers, representing more than 50% of the top U.S. papers, has signed on to the Fair Syndication Consortium. AdBrite, an online advertising marketplace, has agreed to work with the consortium to help monetize content.

The Fair Syndication Consortium strategy is to track sites that swipe and re-use content from the original creators. The Consortium would then contact the site as well as the networks serving ads for compensation.

Hurried public copyright consultations prepare for new bill in fall

A series of public consultations -- the first since 2001 -- on the shape of updated copyright legislation are being held this week and next across the country. The first round-table discussion was today (Monday) in Vancouver included academics and museum staff as well as representatives from the video game, software, television, music, movie and magazine industries, according to a story on CBC.ca.

The next round table is in Calgary on Tuesday followed by others in Gatineau and Montreal next week. The consultations will run until Sept. 13. Some dates have not yet been finalized, the ministers said. There will be webcast town hall meetings from Toronto and Montreal.

Sessions will be posted as audio and video and an online discussion forum and Twitter site are being provided.

"We all know that new technologies are changing the landscape and that Canadian copyright laws need to be updated," said Heritage Minister James Moore in a statement on Monday in Vancouver.

Not only will such laws will affect the music people download and the TV shows they watch on devices such as laptops and smartphones, but also the materials used to educate children and expand our knowledge base, as well as how we value creativity, said Industry Minister Tony Clement.

He added in a statement that the consultations will help the government draft "new, flexible legislation" to help Canada "regain its place on the cutting edge of the digital economy."

The ministers were criticized at the media conference for not providing much information about the Vancouver round table ahead of time. However, they said everything is very new at the moment and more information will be forthcoming.

A previous copyright bill died on the order paper in 2008 when the federal election was called and Clement said that the technological landscape has already changed considerably since Bill C-61 was introduced. He said it seemed like public consultations were "generally something that people were perceived as wanting last time."

After these consultations, the Conservative government expects to introduce a new bill in the fall.

International publishers ask European Union for copyright help

Straws in the copyright winds...

A letter written to the European Union by a group of leading European newspaper and magazine publishers on Thursday asked for enhanced copyright protection to help them generate revenue online, according to a story in the New York Times.

The publishers said widespread use of their work by online news aggregators and other Web sites was undermining their efforts to develop an online business models at a time when readers and advertisers are defecting from newspapers and magazines.
“Numerous providers are using the work of authors, publishers and broadcasters without paying for it,” the publishers said in a letter to Viviane Reding, the European media and telecommunications commissioner. “Over the long term, this threatens the production of high-quality content and the existence of independent journalism.”

Axel Springer, which publishes the tabloid Bild, has led a movement in Germany to obtain so-called "neighboring rights" for publishers, which would give them greater control over secondary use by licensing aggregators who generates revenue from their work while still allowing private individuals to access news sites without such a license.

Martin Selmayr, a spokesman for Ms. Reding, said she had not yet reviewed the document and could not comment on it. But he referred to a speech she gave Thursday in Brussels, in which she said that a top priority for developing the digital economy in Europe was the creation of “a simple, consumer-friendly legal framework for accessing digital content in Europe’s single market, while ensuring at the same time fair remuneration of creators.”

The petition has been signed by executives of News Corp., Axel Springer, Gruner + Jahr, Lagardère, Independent News & Media, the Daily Mail & General Trust, Burda Media and the Espresso Group, among others. Neither the International Herald Tribune nor its parent, The New York Times, is among the signatories.

* * *

Meanwhile, the New York Times is again actively exploring charging some sort of monthly fee for access to its main website, according to a story carried by Bloomberg News. The company circulated a survey to subscribers asking them if they'd consider paying a $2.50 monthly fee to access Nytimes.com while others were asked to pay $5.

“The question here for consumers is the psychological barrier of now paying when you were getting it for free before, and you’re going to lose some readers as a result,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell Inc. in Burlingame, California. “The New York Times will also have to evaluate what this means for ad rates as they lose readers.”

The story pointed out that News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal charges for access to some of its Web site’s content and publishers including Hearst Corp. and E.W. Scripps Co. have said they are considering pay models. It also noted that the Times once before had a pay model for some of its lead columnists and certain editorial content with its Times Select, which generated $10 million annually and had 20,000 users, but was discontinued in 2007.

We're BAACCKK! This time mygazines.com promises to get it right

Those who have followed the tortuous, occasionally hilarious, path of mygazines.com, the pirate magazine file-sharing site that was effectively stomped on by the full force of the magazine industry on several continents, will be interested to read an interview with the new team that is promoting an above-board version.

Ontario-based founder and CEO Darren Budd acknowledges his errors:

Bottom line is, we didn’t handle it right. We had a great technical idea, we had a very good site that could be good for the industry, but we didn’t handle it properly, and the way we’re approaching it now, we’ve brought on people who are experts in their field, who know the industry a lot better than we do. And we can stick to what we’re good at, which is vision and technical, and not try to be PR people.

At the end of the day, you can blame anybody you want. We took bad advice and followed it, and I will take responsibility for it.

He says that, with the help of Yoav Schwartz, a former Microsoft manager originally from Israel (now Mygazines’ head of programming) and Pierre Bisaillon - who set up digital magazine company ZMags Inc in North America as a franchise of Danish-based Danish-based Zmags ApS - to be Mygazines’ “VP, Corporate and Business Development”, the idea will fly.

Access Copyright urging content creators to register

Access Copyright is urging writers, publishers, photographers and visual artists to register with them so that they can receive payment for secondary use of their work. While registration is free, Access says, reproduction of your content shouldn't be. For more information call 1-800-893-5777 or go online to register as an affiliate.