LibGuides: Copyright Guide for Faculty: Fair Dealing

Fair Dealing

Copyright Act, section 29
Permits copying from copyright-protected works, which includes literary works, musical scores, sound recordings, and audiovisual works for the purposes of “fair dealing” (the “Fair Dealing Exception”).

CICAN Fair Dealing Guidelines
Provides direction to colleges as to how the Fair Dealing Exception applies to copying at their institutions; and to provide reasonable safeguards for the copyright holders of copyright protected works in accordance with Canadian copyright law and the Supreme Course decisions.
Justice Institute of BC adopted these guidelines in September 2013.

Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan)
Prepared Fair Dealing Guidelines

Fair Dealing Guidelines

JIBC Institute Faculty and Staff are required to adhere to the Fair Dealing Policy and ensuing Guidelines.

1. Teachers, instructors, professors and staff members in non-profit educational institutions may communicate and reproduce, in paper or electronic form, short excerpts from a copyright-protected work for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire and parody.

2. Copying or communicating short excerpts from a copyright-protected work under this Fair Dealing Policy for the purpose of news reporting, criticism or review should mention the source and, if given in the source, the name of the author or creator of the work.

3. A single copy of a short excerpt from a copyright-protected work may be provided or communicated to each student enrolled in a class or course:

as a class handout
as a posting to a learning or course management system that is password protected or otherwise restricted to students of a school or post-secondary educational institution
as part of a coursepack (due to licensing restrictions with database vendors, we do not produce coursepacks at JIBC)

4. A “Short Excerpt” is:

(a) up to 10% of a copyright-protected work (including a literary work, musical score, sound recording, and an audiovisual work)

(b) one chapter from a book

(d) an entire artistic work (including a painting, print, photograph, diagram, drawing, map, chart, and plan) from a copyright-protected work containing other artistic works

(e) an entire newspaper article or page

(f) an entire single poem or musical score from a copyright-protected work containing other poems or musical scores

(g) an entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary or similar reference work

5. Copying or communicating multiple short excerpts from the same copyright-protected work, with the intention of copying or communicating substantially the entire work, is prohibited.

6. Copying or communicating that exceeds the limits in this Fair Dealing Policy may be referred to the Copyright Officer for evaluation. An evaluation of whether the proposed copying or communication is permitted under fair dealing will be made based on all relevant circumstances.

7. Any fee charged by the university for communicating or copying a short excerpt from a copyright-protected work must be intended to cover only the costs of the university, including overhead costs.

NOTE: The Institute's electronic resources are governed by license agreements with the vendors. Any copying and/or distribution restrictions contained in a license will take precedence over the Fair Dealing Requirements and other user rights in the Copyright Act. To verify if you may or may not place articles or book chapters into Blackboard or distribute material from these electronic resources, please refer to the Library's A-Z Database page, Permitted Uses for this Database.

Background Information

The fair dealing provision in the Copyright Act permits use of a copyright-protected work without permission from the copyright owner or the payment of copyright royalties. To qualify for fair dealing, two tests must be passed.

First, the "dealing" must be for a purpose stated in the Copyright Act: research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody. Educational use of a copyright-protected work passes the first test.
The second test is that the dealing must be "fair". In landmark decisions in 2004 and in 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada provided guidance as to what this test means in educational institutions. This test is often referred to as the Six Factors Analysis.

These criteria should be applied to help determine whether a use of (or dealing with) a work is fair.

Copyright Decision Tools

Copyright Decision Tree
Created by Simon Fraser University, this tool "provides steps to determine whether you can use a copyright protected work in the way you would like to, both for teaching and for other purposes."
Fair Dealing Decision Tool
An online resource to inform educators of their rights and obligations to ensure compliance with copyright law.
Launched by the Copyright Consortium of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).

Fair Dealing Myths and Facts
Fair dealing is an important right that allows the use of copyright-protected material without permission from the copyright holder under certain circumstances. To exercise this right appropriately, it is important to know the facts about fair dealing.