Gatineau Park News News of the Gatineau Park

CBC Rock Climber Coverage Revised

On March 18 Alan Neal of CBC's All in a Day interviewed Eric Grenier the Chair of the Climbers Coalition about his reaction to the restrictions the NCC is placing on rock climbing. As well Alan Neal talked to Daniel Gagnon of Université du Québec à Montréal and Chair of the NCC's External Expert Committee for the Ecosystem Conservation Plan.

I had posted the audio of those interviews but was asked by CBC to take it down, instead linking to the CBC "Listen Again" web page where the same material has been made available until more recent items displace it. The link to that page is below.

Removing the item from this site meant losing the comment that went with it so here it is, from Dave Foster:

"Listened to Prof. Gagnon. The problems he refers to are all things that were resolved years ago. His seems to have no knowledge of climbing practices in the Park since the first climbing management agreement a number of years ago. It’s unfortunate when an “expert” says things that are so misrepresentative."

Here is the link to the CBC "Listen Again" page. Look for "Rock Climbing in Gatineau Park"

I note however that over time the CBC audio will become unavailable at the CBC site. I think it's worth keeping it available. Accordingly I have written the following email to Jeff  Keay, Head of Media Relations, English Services at CBC. Mr Keay has lived in Ottawa so he may have some familiarity with Gatineau Park.

Hi Mr Keay

I’m in Ottawa. I’m running a website dedicated to Gatineau Park. I recently recorded some Radio 1 audio concerning a park issue and posted it.

I informed the show (All In A Day) I had done so, offering to remove the material if needed.

Julie Delaney kindly responded saying she had added the material to their list of “listen again” clips and that I should take it down because CBC required me to pay a large licensing fee to keep it up. I have now removed my post and instead directed visitors to the CBC “listen again” URL.

The issue is a disagreement between the NCC and rock climbers.

Here’s my question: The material now at “listen again” will disappear after a some days or weeks. I think it is of benefit for this material to be available for longer and would like to repost it when it disappears from the CBC site. I know you responded in February to Jesse Brown’s TVO show “Search Engine” saying things are in flux. Do items like this need to be removed from the easily available public record while copyright infringement and sharing legalities are in flux? This is not material CBC was making money on, nor is it material I will be making money on. It is information in the public interest that I want to keep available.

Thanks Kindly

Charles Hodgson

The relevant links are as follows:

My revised post at GuideGatineau.ca

All in a Day “listen again” URL

Search Engine episode “CBC and iCopyright”

I copied Julie Delaney and Jesse Brown on that too.

Supplementary – March 23, 2010

I did hear back from Jeff Keay who said he’d look into seeing if the audio would remain available for the long term or not. I responded saying:

…the question isn't really "will this specific audio remain available via CBC's website?"

It's more like: do I need to depend on the kindness of CBC (this time in the person of Julie Delaney) to make available similar archival material in future? Or are there reasonable conditions under which I can repost the material; for instance when adequate credit is given, when there is no profit lost on CBC's part or gained on my part, and when the material is specifically relevant to other material being offered in the same context...

I then heard back from Jesse Brown who may talk about the incident on his blog or podcast. I don’t see the question of being able to repost CBC material as being too controversial. Everyone is being reasonable about it. But Jesse Brown indicated (and I agree with him) that just by talking about things like this is the way to move the issue forward to a more reasonable policy.

Supplementary again - April 11

Coverage via TVO