- Copying of recorded or published materials in Canada is governed by the Copyright Act, first ratified in 1921.
- Copyright protects ideas as expressed in a particular form, not the ideas themselves.
- It applies to "original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic" works.
- The standard term for copyright is 50 years from the death of the author.
- Strathcona County Library pays a licensing fee to Access Copyright which gives our staff and patrons the right to photocopy—as a rule of thumb, up to 10% of a published work (such as a book) or one entire newspaper article, short story, play, poem, essay, etc. from an anthology or serial.
Libraries’ Rights
Libraries have specific rights that are set out in the Copyright Act. First, libraries can copy works in order to maintain and manage their collections. For example, a library can make a copy of a rare work it owns if the work itself is in danger of deteriorating.
Libraries also have certain rights that control what they can provide to their patrons, especially through interlibrary loans. Libraries may copy an entire article of a scholarly, scientific or technical nature for a patron. They can also copy all other periodical articles, as long as the article is at least a year old at the time the copy is made. These copies must be for private research or educational purposes, and these rights apply only as long as no commercial alternative is available.
Fair Dealing
What is called “fair use” in American copyright law is known as “fair dealing” in Canada (although the two are NOT exactly the same, as fair use extends much further and is more clearly defined). Fair dealing is the use of copyrighted works for one of the following five uses: (a) private study, (b) research, (c) criticism, (d) review or (e) news reporting. Much of the copying patrons engage in could be considered this type of use. More specific guidelines for what constitutes fair dealing have never been defined by Canadian legislation or court decisions. Fair dealing is a legal defence, in the sense that only the courts can determine if a particular use of a copyrighted work is fair dealing or infringement.
Fair dealing covers only the five types of use outlined above. It has nothing directly to do with the amount of the original source used, whether the copier profits from the use, or whether the source material has been altered. These factors may be considered as part of a fair dealing defence, but any standards set using these criteria are arbitrary and do not come from the law.
Copyright Collectives
There is no central agency in Canada that registers all copyright holders. The closest thing to such an agency is copyright collectives, which represent groups of copyright holders, authorizing copying and collecting compensation on their behalf. The main collective for English-speaking Canada is Access Copyright (http://www.accesscopyright.ca).
Copyright Online
A common conception is that material available on the Internet is not subject to copyright. Even if we know online material is copyrighted, we often tend to act as if we believe it isn’t. In the eyes of the law, material published online is no different from any other type of published material, and reproduction of online works is subject to the same restrictions as the use of any other copyrighted material.
The exception to this rule is websites and other materials that are intentionally published with alternative licenses. For example, all the text of Wikipedia is licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License. Therefore, Wikipedia authors do not retain their copyright, and the content from this website can be used in many ways. Many blogs (including this one), photos and academic papers published online are given Creative Commons licenses by their creators. Creators can specify how their content can be re-used, rather than taking advantage of the blanket protection offered by traditional copyright. These alternative forms of licensing are developed because creators do not want their works to be subject to all of the constraints of copyright. They voluntarily give up some of their rights to make their work more freely available.
The Digital Music Exception
Canada is one of the few countries where copying of music onto blank media (CDs, cassettes) is legal, because music industry copyright holders are compensated through a levy that is paid by consumers on such blank media. Such copying is legal even if the copier does not own the original recording. To constitute a legal copy, the recording must be for private use only, and it cannot be rented, sold, or distributed in any way. Uploading a file (which usually happens automatically with the use of a peer-to-peer network such as LimeWire) is not necessarily legal, however, and it is not covered by this levy.
End User License Agreements and Digital Rights Management
The way libraries can provide access to information is often dictated by End User License Agreements (EULAs) and other types of contracts. Even if all you do is click on “I Agree,” or even open a shrink-wrapped CD-ROM, this may constitute entering into a contract, which supersedes copyright law. EULAs apply to many electronic resources such as databases, and they often prohibit use that would otherwise be considered fair dealing—including, in some cases, making copies of any kind.
“Digital Rights Management” (DRM) refers to any type of control that is placed on an electronic product to determine how it is used or distributed. For example, some audio CDs cannot be copied to a computer. Like EULAs, DRM can prevent use that could be considered fair dealing. One of the most important aspects of copyright reform in Canada is whether it is legal for users to circumvent DRM.
Often, electronic products have “use rights” instead of “ownership rights” attached to them. Both DRM and EULAs affect how users can access materials, even materials that they have purchased or that are in the public domain. DRM and EULAs can result in digital products that can are useful in only very limited ways. They can also have serious, negative ramifications for the privacy of end users.
Resources
For finding public domain or un-copyrighted material:
- Compfight: http://www.compfight.com/ - A search engine that searches flickr. Turn the “Creative Commons” setting to “Commercial” to find images that can be used for any purpose.
- PicFindr: http://www.picfindr.com/ -A search engine for stock photo sites. Photos may be watermarked.
- Public Domain Music: http://www.pdinfo.com/ - A site to identify public domain music and lyrics.
- Prelinger Archvies: http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger - one of the Internet’s largest film archives, containing advertising, home movies, educational films and ephemera in the public domain.
For learning more about copyright:
- Canadian Intellectual Property Office – Guide to Copyrights. http://snipurl.com/2xgkh
- Canadian Library Association’s Copyright Resource Centre. http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Copyright_Information
- Copyright Act. http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/index.html [note that a bill to revise the Copyright Act, Bill C-61, was tabled last year and will likely be re-introduced in 2009.]
- Laura J. Murray and Samuel E. Trosow. Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide. 346.710 MUR 2007.
- Media Awareness Network: Canadian Copyright Act Overview. http://snipurl.com/2xert
- University of Alberta – Copying Right. http://www.ls.ualberta.ca/copyrightoffice/copyingright.htm
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