Canada’s Copyright Act is currently under review, leading to questions about how students and professors who copy excerpts of work for class readings will be affected if the Act is amended.
According to a government of Canada news release, a December 2017 decision has resulted in a Parliamentary review of the Act in order to “maintain a comprehensive framework, one [under] which Canadian creators get fairly compensated for their work.”
In 2012, the government passed the Copyright Modernization Act, a law to amend Canada’s Copyright Act.
These amendments gave students and educators more leeway when using copyrighted material for the purpose of education, a process also known as fair dealing. The new changes also required that the Act be reviewed every five years.
Currently, Carleton University follows a “Fair Dealing Policy,” which allows for short excerpts of work to be reproduced without infringing on copyright laws. Typically, this is 10 per cent of the material, equal to 50 pages out of a 500-page textbook, or three pages out of a 30-page chapter.
However, Kate Edwards, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP), said the review should work on clarifying the education aspect of the Fair Dealing Policy.
“The law does not set limits or provide guidance on what might be considered fair, which has resulted in widespread and systemic copying without compensation,” Edwards said in an email. She added that while the 10 per cent guideline currently does not exist in the Act itself, it has been widely adopted across Canada.
She also suggested that there should be a system of collective licensing—costing about $26 per year—that allows access to the materials students need for their studies but also ensures that some payment is returned to the publishers.
These changes are important, she said, because the ACP represents Canadian publishers producing Canadian content and perspectives, which are important resources for students.
“Publishers and writers need to know that there will be some reasonable return on their investment in order to continue to produce those books on an ongoing basis,” she said.
Valerie Critchley, systems and copyright librarian at Carleton University, said the problem is that there is a lack of definition of what ‘fair dealing’ means, as the only statements in the Act have come from Supreme Court rulings.
If a teacher were to copy more than 10 per cent of a textbook for their students, Critchley said the consequences would all depend on how they restrict ‘fair dealing,’ and what happens with the Act.
Critchley added that this is a grey area, and it would be difficult to monitor whether or not people are infringing on copyright laws, especially on education portals like Carleton’s cuLearn.
“I have no idea of whether [there] will be a change to the Act, whether they are going to add regulations, or just leave things as it is . . . it really is just speculation at this point,” Critchley said.
Currently, the Standing Committee is holding public consultations with different groups and people across the country, and the review is expected to be completed in early 2019.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
