Dear members of the writing community:
CBC has long supported the arts with various programs including contests. Last year I noticed a contest for a poem on Mark Forsyth’s BC Almanac (Radio One). But when I read the rules and regulations CBC asked for all rights, including moral rights. I thought and hoped that this might just be an error, not to be repeated.

However, this year, CBC has been advertising Canada Writes, geared specifically towards writers. The full rules and regulations can be found at: http://www.cbc.ca/canadawrites/rules.html. The paragraph that concerned me was found under 4. Registration:

Entry forms become the property of CBC, free of any compensation or charges, and will not be returned to contestants. All submissions must be original and not infringe copyright or the rights of any other party, individual or otherwise, including but not limited to any person, group, entity, or company.

By entering the contest, each participant shall waive any and all moral rights over his/her entry and grant CBC an irrevocable licence to use of the work on- air or online: the entries may be read and aired on CBC Radio One in whole or in part, or online, on any websites or platforms related to the CBC, without any compensation being payable to the participant.

While it is not uncommon for some contests to ask for all publishing rights in return for a contest prize, it is highly unusual to ask for moral rights. Any reputable publisher will not ask for such rights and CBC taking this precedent is dangerous. The issue of rights is a complicated and often confusing one. I am no copyright lawyer but as a writer and artist I am concerned with this requirement by CBC. Below is a definition of moral rights:

http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/D4718204-9904-42DF-8A5C84A64827173D/alpha/M/

In copyright law, rights guaranteed authors by the Berne Convention that are considered personal to the author and that cannot therefore be bought, sold or transferred. Moral rights include the right to proclaim authorship of a work, disclaim authorship of a work and object to any modification or use of the work that would be injurious to the author’s reputation.

This is of such concern to me that I cannot conscionably sit back as either a writer or as the president of SF Canada without bringing it to people’s attention. On January 19, I emailed CBC expressing my concerns. I heard nothing. Again I wrote on January 30, asking for a response and should I not receive one by February 6 I would contact as many Canadian writers’
organizations as possible. (If you would like to see a copy of those letters, please contact me and I will send them.)

If we ignore this, we set up a precedent for artists losing moral rights, where their works can be altered or attributed to someone else at the whim of the owner. If your organization has already been in contact with CBC and has any news on this issue, I would be interested in hearing what is happening.

Over the years, in various ways writers’ works and rights have been jeopardized. With a united voice I believe we can stop this trend and educate people before it becomes entrenched. I must say on a personal level that I am shocked and saddened that CBC would stoop to this level and I sincerely hope it is just the work of overzealous lawyers and can be circumvented.

I look forward to talking more with you and finding a solution.

Regards,
Colleen Anderson
President
SF Canada

I have contacted the following organizations:
[email protected] Anita Purcell, Canadian Authors Association [email protected] Deborah Windsor, Executive Director, Canadian Writers Union [email protected] Tanya Gulliver, President, PWAC [email protected] Rebecca Schechter, President, Writers Guild of Canada [email protected] Joanna Poblocka, Executive Director, League of Canadian Poets [email protected] Donna Allard, President, Canadian Poetry Association.

Dear Colleen Anderson,

Thanks for your letter about CBC assuming moral rights from authors. It is, as they say, egregious. Please ask all writers organizations to get on board and we shall complain. In addition, this should never happen at an institution that is funded, in large measure, with tax money.

Please draft a letter that writers orgs can consider. Do cc it to both Tony Clement, at Industry, and James Moore at Heritage, CTV, The National and the Globe. The former is changing copyright legislation, and thus is actively interested in such issues. The League has a brief in at both departments regarding reprography.

Assuming moral rights gives the publisher complete rights to use, change and reassemble the text and images and publish it in any media for making profit, and to using an author’s ‘likeness’ etc. All writers should be against this one.

Just so you know, CBC is not alone in this, other large publishers and conglomerates such as Canwest have been absorbing moral rights for a couple of years now. And it is one of the main reasons that writers receive so little from Access Copyright – the large publishers have consumed moral rights and now use it to claim our reprography revenue.

In addition they have added indemnification and hold harmless clauses; in this and any other media in this and any other universe forever; and longer and longer royalty clauses where less and less is granted to the author.

To give you one example of how absorption of moral – and other – rights has affected writers: at Access Copyright in 2008 about 10% of about $40 million went to writers; the rest went to administration and mostly to larger publishers, even though reprography was set up to reward writers.

Thanks
D.C. Reid
President
League of Canadian Poets.