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.