Given the author's argument, which one of the following additions to current Canadian copyright law would most likely...

Shunhe on August 6, 2020

Hi @tjs,

Thanks for the question! So this question is asking us to find some kind of a compromise to which both the Internet community and the publishing community would agree. Well, first thing we have to figure out is, what are the interests of those to groups?

First, we’ll start off with the Internet community. What do they want? Take a look at lines 56-58, which tells us that the Internet community “is accustomed to treating information as raw material available for everyone to use.” So basically, the internet community thinks that everyone should get everything, and for free.

What does the publishing community want? Well, we’re told that in the lines after. Lines 59-60 tell us that the publishing community “is accustomed to treating [information] as a commodity owned by its creator.” So they think that information is owned by people, and so they should be able to charge for it.

Now we’re looking for a compromise between these two positions, something that’ll make them meet in the middle. Well, one position wants owners to be able to charge for information, while the other wants free information for people. Now take a look at (A), which says that a compromise would be to have digitalization of copyrighted works permitted to Internet users who pay a small fee to copyright holders. And this meets both of them in the middle. It’s not completely free, but the fee is only a small one, as opposed to paying some price that the owner would be able to charge which could be much higher. So the owner still gets money, but most people should be able to access it since the fee is small. So since (A) is between these two positions, it’s the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.