Privacy Policy

Access Copyright is committed to respecting your right to privacy. This Privacy Policy is to inform our customers, affiliates, and users of our website how we collect, use and disclose personal information. 

Your initial and continued use of this website, your affiliation with Access Copyright, and your use of our services indicates your acceptance of this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to modify or update this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy please do not use this website, affiliate with us or use our services. Please check this page periodically for any modifications or changes. The effective date of the modified or updated Privacy Policy is located at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this website, affiliation or use of our services on or after the effective date of any such modification or update signifies your acceptance of such modification or update. Please feel free to print out a copy of this Privacy Policy for your records.

Our Privacy Manager

Our Privacy Manager will respond to any inquiries regarding our Privacy Policy and procedures. You may contact our Privacy Manager through any of the following means:

By email: privacy@accesscopyright.ca
By telephone: 416-868-1620 (toll-free 1-800-893-5777)
By mail: Access Copyright
56 Wellesley Street West, 3rd Floor
Toronto, ON, M5S 2S3
Attention: Privacy Manager

What Personal Information do we collect from you? How do we use it?

“Personal Information” is information about an identifiable individual and includes your name, home address, telephone number and email address. It does not include the name, title, business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization. It also does not apply to information that is publicly available (e.g. your name when linked to a work in which you hold the rights). At various times throughout our website or through other dealings with Access Copyright, you may be asked to voluntarily provide us with Personal Information; for example, if you wish to affiliate with us, obtain information or services from us or use our online tools and portals (“online systems”). Access Copyright has prominently placed a hypertext link to this Privacy Policy on all of its webpages including those on which Personal Information is collected.

Access Copyright collects and uses your Personal Information in the following ways, and for the purposes described below:

(a) Requesting a Licence. Visitors to our website are invited to use our online system to browse our bibliographic database of works and to request a licence to copy works. To request a licence, you must provide us with information, including Personal information, that we consider necessary to process your request. If you are a first time user of our online system for requesting a licence, you will need to create an online user account by providing us with your name, address, email address, telephone number, “user name”, organization, sector, and business type. The onus is on you to ensure Access Copyright has up-to-date Personal Information. You may update this information at any time through your user account or by contacting Royalty and Client Services. If you request a licence, we will use your user account information together with the information that you provided in making the request, to fulfill your copyright clearance needs and to generate a licence and invoice, and to collect payment of licensing fees from you. We will also use your Personal Information to communicate with you for educational, business and promotional purposes.

(b) Becoming an Affiliate. Any copyright holder who affiliates or applies for affiliation with Access Copyright will be asked to provide certain information, including Personal Information, such as your name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, birth date, banking information and SIN. The onus is on you to ensure Access Copyright has up-to-date Personal Information. You may update this information at any time by logging into the affiliate portal with your username and password or by contacting Royalty and Client Services. If you become or apply to become an affiliate, we will use your Personal Information to provide services to you, including, but not limited to, collecting and distributing royalties, monitoring the permitted uses of your works under our licences, and for the purposes of tax reporting. We will also use your Personal Information to communicate with you for educational, business and promotional purposes.

(c) Completing the Compliance Complaint Form. Under the Compliance page of our website, you may file a complaint regarding unauthorized use of a copyright-protected work. To file your complaint, you may be asked to provide information, including Personal Information, such as your name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number. If you complete the Compliance Complaint Form, the information that you provide will be used to evaluate and potentially follow-up on complaints that you have brought to our attention.

(d) Contests. From time to time we run contests. These may require visitors of our website to enter information, including Personal Information, such as a home or email address. If you participate in a contest, the information that you provide will be used only to administer the contest and contact the contestant if s/he has been selected as a possible winner, unless the contestant provides consent to Access Copyright or its agents to use the Personal Information for other purposes.

(e) Online Surveys. Periodically, we may ask visitors of our website to complete an online survey to ask them to provide us with feedback on aspects of the website or demographic information such as employment position and industry. We use this information to better assess the persons who use our website and how we may improve our service to them. Completing the survey is entirely voluntary and is not needed to obtain a product or service.

(f) Unlocatable Copyright Owners. In cases where a copyright owner cannot be located, the Copyright Board of Canada may stand in his or her place and issue a licence. In some cases, Access Copyright supports the Copyright Board in this task by holding royalties for missing copyright owners and continuing to search for unlocatable copyright owners. If Access Copyright locates an unlocatable copyright owner, it may collect Personal Information for the purposes of distributing royalties.

Access Copyright also uses Personal Information collected from licensees, affiliates and visitors of the website in the following ways, and for the purposes described below:

(a) Internal Study. We use the Personal Information provided to us when you create user accounts for online systems, apply to become affiliates or file complaints, to conduct internal studies to better understand the persons who use Access Copyright's services and how we may improve them. 

(b) Email Newsletter and Notices of Events. We use email addresses provided to us when you create user accounts for online systems or become an affiliate or licensee in order to send you an email newsletter and occasionally to send you emails about news or events related to our services and activities. You can unsubscribe to our email list at any time.

What information do we collect and use from your computer?

Access Copyright does not collect any Personal Information from visitors who merely access or browse our website. However, the following information about our visitors' computers, web browsers and Internet service providers is automatically collected and stored when visitors access or browse our website:

  • the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your computer, which is a number automatically assigned to your computer by your own Internet Service Provider (ISP);
  • the IP Address of your ISP;
  • your browser and platform type (e.g. a Netscape browser on a Windows platform);
  • the date and time you accessed our website;
  • the sections of the website you visited, as well as the pages read and the images viewed; and
  • the content that you downloaded from the website.

It is our policy not to link the above information to any information that can identify you. We use this information to help diagnose problems with our server and for systems administration purposes. Your IP address may be used in an aggregate manner to gather broad demographic information, giving Access Copyright an idea of which parts of the site users are looking at, so that we may improve the site to better suit users' needs. It is our policy not to link IP addresses with the identity of individuals visiting our website.

Our cookie policy

A cookie is a small text file that enables our website to save and retrieve information. We use session ID cookies to track usage patterns and deliver customized content to users. You can set your browser to detect and reject cookies. However, please note that if you choose to reject cookies, you will not be able to use the online application. 

Right to access your Personal Information

You have the right to access all Personal Information that we have collected from you and that we retain on file, and you may choose to update, modify or delete this information at any time by contacting our Privacy Manager by email at:  privacy@accesscopyright.ca. You may also contact our Privacy Manager by telephone or by mail. Please refer to the “Privacy Manager” section of this policy for contact information. There is no fee for you to access your Personal Information.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Access Copyright does not sell, trade, rent, share or give away any of your Personal Information to third parties for marketing purposes. Nor do we disclose your Personal Information to any third parties without your express consent, unless a limited disclosure of your Personal Information is necessary to fulfill a service that you have requested from us. For example, we disclose your Personal Information to the financial institution that processes your credit card information or payment transaction.

Access Copyright will disclose your Personal Information in the following manner and for the following purposes:

  • Designated employees of Access Copyright have access to your Personal Information for the purposes identified above. If your compliance complaint falls within our mandate and is acted upon by Access Copyright your identity may be disclosed to agents of Access Copyright, such as litigation counsel. Certain contractors of Access Copyright will have access to your Personal Information in order to maintain this website. All Access Copyright contractors are bound by the terms of this Privacy Policy and are familiar with the procedures that must be taken to safeguard your Personal Information.
  • We will provide your Personal Information to third parties where it is required for income tax reporting purposes or other legal and regulatory purposes that may arise.
  • Your name, publications and status as an affiliate will be disclosed to licensees, prospective licensees, foreign reproductive rights organizations, users of the online system and, on request, members of the public.
  • In certain limited and discrete circumstances recognized by federal privacy law, Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, S.C. 2000, c. 5, we may be required to disclose your Personal Information without your consent, for example, if the disclosure is required to comply with an order made by a court or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information.
  • The Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42 section 70.5(2) provides that a collective society may file a copy of a licensing agreement with the Copyright Board, within 15 days after it is concluded. As a matter of policy, and as a condition of the licence, Access Copyright files copies of all concluded comprehensive licences with the Copyright Board. Access Copyright is advised by the Copyright Board that its policy is to make these filed licences available to the public, upon request. For more information about why we file licences with the Copyright Board, please contact our Privacy Manager by email at: privacy@accesscopyright.ca or by telephone or mail. Please refer to the “Privacy Manager” section of this Privacy Policy for contact information. If you have any questions of the Copyright Board of Canada, please contact the Copyright Board of Canada at www.cb-cda.gc.ca.

Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties

Access Copyright does not sell, trade, rent, share or give away any of your Personal Information to third parties for marketing purposes. Nor do we disclose your Personal Information to any third parties without your express consent, unless a limited disclosure of your Personal Information is necessary to fulfill a service that you have requested from us. For example, we disclose your Personal Information to the financial institution that processes your credit card information or payment transaction.

Retention of your Personal Information

We retain your Personal Information only as long as is required for the reasons it was collected. This depends on the nature of the services we are providing to you or the nature of the request you have made. For example, we retain affiliates' and licensees' information for at least seven years as required by law. However, following the completion of a pay-per use licence transaction, we do not retain your credit card information unless specifically requested by you. We only retain the confirmation number that we receive from the financial institution that processes your credit card payment.

Links to Websites Owned by Third Parties

We are not responsible for any information: (a) you disclose to websites that you access through a link on the Access Copyright website; or (b) the privacy practices or the content of such websites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any linked websites before you use them or disclose your Personal Information online.

Access Copyright encourages and appreciates links in your own webpages to www.accesscopyright.ca. Permission is expressly granted to any person who wishes to place a link in his or her own website to www.accesscopyright.ca. In the event we contact you and request the link be removed, you agree to comply with that request promptly. As a courtesy, if you link to or otherwise include www.accesscopyright.ca on your website, please let us know and create any link to our home page only.

Our security measures

This website is equipped with standard security measures to ensure that your Personal Information is secure from loss, theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. Given the evolving nature of the Internet, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will be sufficient to protect your Personal Information; however, we will maintain all safeguards we deem reasonably necessary in order to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of your Personal Information. These can include security features such as running certain pages of our website on a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) server, as well as, for the processing of credit card information, the use of Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) and 128-bit encryption.

Questions, comments or concerns about our Privacy Policy?

We want to hear from you if you have any questions or comments or concerns about our Privacy Policy or the handling of your Personal Information. Please contact our Privacy Manager by email at: privacy@accesscopyright.ca. You may also contact our Privacy Manager by telephone or by mail. Please refer to the "Privacy Manager" section of this Privacy Policy for contact information.

If you feel that your concerns have not been addressed adequately, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at 1-800-282-1376, by e-mail at info@privcom.gc.ca or by mail to:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner
112 Kent Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1H3

Last updated on May 19, 2015