Please note that the information provided on this site is for educational purposes and is not intended as legal advice.
Simply put, copyright is the right to copy to prevent others from copyright your work. It applies to all original literary, musical, dramatic, and artistic works.
It protects the expression of an idea, rather than the idea itself.
In Canada, the term of copyright protection is the life of the creator +50 years. Sound recordings are covered for an additional 20 years. Thereafter works enter the public domain where they can be used freely.
Copyright protection is automatic. A work is protected by copyright as soon as it is fixed in print or digital format.
Copyright infringement occurs when a person does something with a copyright-protected work that only the copyright owner is entitled to do, and does so without the copyright owner's permission.
Copyright is actually a bundle of rights. Creators have the exclusive right to:
Broadly speaking, creators have two type of rights:
The Copyright Act aims to strike a balance between user and creator rights. For this reason, it includes special allowances for both of these groups.
Perhaps the best known user right is fair dealing. Fair dealing permits use of copyright protected works, without payment or permission from the copyright owner, for eight purposes:
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The Supreme Court of Canada has outlined six factors, or considerations, to help users determine if their use if fair to the copyright owner. These include: purpose, amount, character, nature, alternatives, and effect.
The Copyright Act also includes exceptions for users in specific settings, such as Education. Exceptions are so called because they permit uses of copyright-protected content that would otherwise be considered infringement.
The Act also includes a set of special exceptions for Libraries, Archives and Museums (or LAMs). For example, section 30.1(1) applies to Management and Maintenance of Collection. Under this section, libraries can make a copy of a work in an alternative format if the original is in a format that is obsolete (or becoming obsolete), or if the technology required to use the original is unavailable.
Langara Library, like most libraries today, subscribes to an array of e-resources, including e-journals, databases, e-book platforms, and streaming media collections.
Use of these resources is governed by license agreements (contracts) with the content provider. The terms of these agreements trump user rights in the Copyright Act. For this reason, it's important to protect rights that are important to members of the community you serve within contracts (which are open to negotiation!)
If your use is not covered by a license, fair dealing, or another exception in the Copyright Act it doesn't mean that you can't use the work. Rather, it means you require permission from the copyright owner.
There are numerous ways to seek permission:
If you secure permission, keep a copy for your records in case questions arise!
Open licenses are an alternative to traditional copyright. They allow creators to retain some rights in their bundle of copyrights, while waiving others. For example, a photographer might waive their right to benefit financially from their work, but retain their right to be credited.
There are many open licensing models, but Creative Commons is perhaps the best known and most widely used.