This past year, workers in the cultural sector have faced a barrage of challenges that have really made life difficult. For them, like us, the year has tested our patience and resilience.
Here’s a review of the major developments for your copyright collective in the past 12 months.
Copibec working from home
When the state of emergency was declared, Copibec shifted into remote work mode to protect the health of our team members and their families. Your copyright collective has therefore been operating on a remote basis since March 16.
Supporting the book industry
As we’ve all seen, the cultural sector has been hard hit by the pandemic. That’s why Copibec partnered with the Association des libraires du Québec last June to urge Quebec businesses to support our local book industry. How? By encouraging their teams to buy a Quebec book and share the news on social media using the hashtags #jelisbleu and #jelisbleuchezlesindependants.
Direct deposit
In light of this year’s situation, Copibec stepped up the development of payment services via direct deposit so creators and publishers could receive their royalties faster and more conveniently. So far, over 1,400 people have taken advantage of it.
Adapting to conditions
The education sector was among those that had no choice but to adapt to the new situation. Measures had to be taken almost overnight to set up remote learning and ensure that creators would be paid for the use of their content. As a result, starting in the very first weeks of the pandemic, the education sector’s licences were temporarily expanded for the remainder the 2019-2020 school year.
Virtual classrooms and public readings are now allowed under the agreement between Copibec and the Ministère de l’éducation et de l’enseignement supérieur! This improvement facilitated the already difficult work done by thousands of teachers who have had to rethink their teaching methods in recent months.
Looking forward to new projects
There’s been no shortage of projects for our team even during this stranger-than-fiction year. Your copyright collective made progress in developing the DONA platform and a hub.
That means a brand new DONA platform for ordering accessible digital documents will be rolled out in 2021. And the Copibec Hub, a content management platform powered by blockchain technology for Quebec businesses, is expected to be up and running in January 2022.
COVID-19 won’t stop your copyright collective from continuing to defend the rights and interests of authors and publishers. Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be sure you don’t miss anything.
What a team!
Of course, none of this would be possible without our team. Let’s take the time to appreciate them and underscore the hard work done by every team member: Anouk, Arezki, Bayard, Camille, Caroline, Cécile, Christian, Danielle, Éric, Eve, Francis, Frédérique, Isabelle, Jean-Philippe, Jean-Sébastien, Jean-Wesly, Kevin, Laura, Martin, Mélissa, Morgane, Mylène, Nicolas, Rabii, Simon and Suzanne.