A few weeks ago we posted on this blog that we’d be taking some time to review the questions you had re: CBC’s use of iCopyright - we want to share some answers with you.   

Asking permission.

 Over the last couple of weeks, many of you have noted in blog posts or tweets that “Canadian taxpayers have already helped to pay for content on the CBC.ca site”- that’s true. Some have also asked “why should I have to pay for it again?”- in most cases, you won’t have to. 

 Connecting Canadians through our content, both online and off, is job one for us and we continue to offer a lot of our content for free as well as over 200 share/bookmarking tools to help you share that content with others. 

 If you want to post a link to our stories on Facebook, Twitter or your blog, feel free, we have no problem with that- just please take some time to read our policies around linking.

 When it comes to the re-use (excerpting, quoting, re-posting) of material from our site- reasonable, non-commercial use of our content is just fine by us- we ask that you submit a permission request before you do that.

Why do we ask you to submit a permission request? First of all, our writers, journalists and producers put a lot time, effort and ideas in to what they publish on our site and, just like any other content provider, we need to know how this content is being used in order to protect all of this hard work from inappropriate use.

Also, we don't own all of the material on our site. We use stories, photos, video, etc. from CP, Getty, APTN, Canwest, to name a few- we have to ask for permission to use this content ourselves and some times we even have to pay for it. When we are granted permission to use this outside content on our site, we’re not always authorized to grant permissions for use beyond CBC.ca.

 We know that asking for and waiting for permission might seem a little counter-intuitive in the real-time digital world, however- as some of you have already noted in the conversations happening around this issue- our policies are no different from those of other major content providers and even public broadcasters worldwide.

 Licensing.

 The CBC has licensed material for commercial, and other, purposes for years now, that didn’t change with the introduction of iCopyright. What iCopyright is there to do is to ensure that CBC.ca content and our CBC brand are protected from inappropriate commercial use.

 We’re using iCopyright because it allows us to automate a previously manual process- helping to reduce our admin costs while building a much needed revenue stream that is then reinvested in our content and platforms.

 We hear you.

 We heard you when you said that we’re not doing a very good job of communicating both our policies and how/when iCopyrght would apply to the reuse of content on our site.

In the coming weeks we’ll be making changes to our site in order to make things easier to understand and to clear up any inconsistencies- we’ll post here and update you once those changes have been made. 

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts with us re: CBC.ca’s use of iCopyright as well as all of your questions about our general policies related to citations, link sharing etc.

We’re reviewing your questions and we'll get back to you with answers shortly.

We’ll reply back directly to those who have posted direct questions either via the blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook and then collect all of the responses on this blog.

Thank you,

Chris Ball
CBC Public Affairs.
Online Media Relations
Twitter: @chrisjballcbc

We’ve been listening to the conversations over the last day regarding CBC’s use of iCopyright to manage the usage rights for content originating from CBC.ca.

Some of the recent commentary seems to be driven by a misunderstanding of what we're trying to do, so we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few misconceptions that have been floating around.

What does CBC’s use of iCopyright mean for Canadians? Simply put, not a lot has changed.

We continue to welcome appropriate use of our content in blog posts, social networks and other online media. There’s no charge to do that.

And even with iCopyright in place you’ll still be able to excerpt from stories originating from CBC.ca. If you’re writing a blog post and want to quote one of our stories, you can.

You’ll also still be able to post links to CBC.ca content on blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter or other online media at no charge and will continue to offer free RSS stories for websites (found here).

Our rules for the use of our content have not changed with the iCopyright agreement. What the agreement does do is, continues to provide ways for our content to be used but reduces our administrative costs.

The other question that’s been raised is why the CBC, a public broadcaster funded by taxpayers, would ask Canadians to pay to repost our content in full.

Licensing fees aren’t new to the CBC and while it's true that Canadian taxpayers support a significant portion of what we do, it doesn’t cover the total cost of the many services we provide. We need to generate revenues to offset our expenses, this is true for CBC Television and it is especially true for CBC.ca, where the scope has expanded significantly over the past dozen years.

Finally, we’ve heard those who have wondered whether iCopyright/CBC are now trying to impose “American rules” on Canadians and why Canada’s National Public Broadcaster would partner with an American company in this endeavor.

As will always be the case, Canadian rules will apply to Canadians. While iCopyright is an American company it has offices in Canada and provides services to other major Canadian organizations.

We hope this helps to answer a few questions that have emerged over the last 24 hours.

Yours,

Chris Ball

CBC Online Media Relations.

E: chris.ball@cbc.ca

Twitter: @chrisjballCBC