Copyright & Fair Dealing

Trent University respects the rights of creators and owners of copyright-protected materials and the rights of users to make certain uses of copyright-protected materials. 

Use of copyright-protected materials by Trent University students, staff and faculty must comply with the Canadian Copyright Act and Trent University's Use of Copyrighted Material Guidelines.

These guidelines are based on the Fair Dealing Policy for Universities developed by Universities Canada. 

Contact copyright@trentu.ca with any questions about copyright and fair dealing.

What is Copyright?

Copyright means the sole or exclusive right to produce or reproduce a work or substantial part of a work in any form, the right to perform the work or any substantial part, or for unpublished works, the right to publish the work or any substantial part of it. 

In Canada, copyright applies to all original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, performances, sound recordings and communication signals at the time of creation.

General Copying Rights & Freedoms

Generally, you must seek permission from the copyright owner before you make use of a copyright-protected work, unless:

  • The work is in the public domain, such as when the term of copyright protection has expired;
  • The work is licensed for the applicable use under an existing license agreement; 
  • The work is licensed for the applicable use under a Creative Commons or other form of public license;
  • The copying is quantitatively and qualitatively insubstantial, for example quoting selected sentences from an article, book, poem or song, or displaying short clips from a film or television production;
  • The use qualifies as fair dealing under sections 29, 29.1 and 29.2 of the Copyright Act;
  • The use falls within a specific exception set out in the Copyright Act.

Fair Dealing Guidelines

Fair Dealing is the end user's right, in certain situations, to copy a short excerpt from a copyright-protected work without permission from or payment to the copyright owner.

To qualify as fair dealing, the use must be for an allowable purpose, and must be considered "fair".

Purpose

To qualify, the dealing must be for an allowable purpose set out in s.29 of the Copyright Act:

  • Research
  • Private Study
  • Education
  • Parody & Satire
  • Criticism & Review
  • News Reporting

Fairness: The 6 Factor Test

The Copyright Act does not define fairness. Fair dealing is context-specific and depends on the facts of each case. Six factors to be considered in assessing fairness are:

  1. Purpose of the Dealing: Is the copying done for an allowable purpose as defined in s.29, including research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism & review, news reporting?
  2. Character of the Dealing: Does the copying involve single or multiple copies? How are copies distributed and to whom? How is access to the copied material controlled?
  3.  Amount of the Dealing: What proportion of the work is copied, and how important is the excerpt in relation to the entire work? Is the copying substantial or can it be considered a short excerpt?
  4. Alternatives to the Dealing: Is there a non-copyrighted equivalent available? Is the dealing reasonably necessary to achieve the purpose?
  5. Nature of the Work: Is the work published or unpublished? Is the work in question confidential?
  6. Effect of the Dealing on the Work: Is the dealing likely to compete with the market for the original work? Is the dealing likely to have a negative impact on the market for the original work? 

Short Excerpts

A short excerpt means:

  • 10% or less of a work, or 
  • No more than:
    • One chapter of a book;
    • A single article from a periodical;
    • An entire artistic work, including a painting, print, photograph, diagram, drawing, map, chart or plan from a work containing other artistic works;
    • An entire newspaper article or page from a newspaper;
    • An entire single poem or musical score from a work containing other poems or musical scores;
    • an entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary or similar reference work.

The short excerpt must contain no more of the work than is required in order to achieve the fair dealing purpose.

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.

A single copy of a short excerpt from a copyrighted work may be provided or communicated to each student registered in a course:

  • as a class handout; or
  • as a posting in Blackboard.

Any fee charged by Trent for copying a short excerpt must not exceed the costs of making the copy.

Copies of short excerpts made for the purpose of news reporting, criticism, or review must mention the source and, if given the source, the name of the author(s) and creator(s) or the work.

You may not make copies of multiple short excerpts from the same work when the combined amount exceeds what can be considered a Short Excerpt as defined above.

Additional Exceptions in the Copyright Act

In addition to Fair Dealing, there are other exceptions in the Copyright Act for educational instutituions.

Section 29.4 of the Copyright Act covers exceptions for Educational Institutions, including:

  • 29.4(1): It is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution or a person acting under its authority for the purposes of education or training on its premises to reproduce a work, or do any other necessary act, in order to display it.
    • This includes reproduction on whiteboards, chalkboards, overheads, projected slides

  • 29.4(2): It is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution or a person acting under its authority to

    (a) reproduce, translate or perform in public on the premises of the educational institution, or

    (b) communicate by telecommunication to the public situated on the premises of the educational institution 

    a work or other subject-matter as required for a test or examination.

The exemption from copyright infringement provided by subsections (1) and (2) does not apply if the work or other subject-matter is commercially available (available on the Canadian market within a reasonable time and for a reasonable price and may be located with reasonable effort) in a medium that is appropriate for the purposes referred to in those subsections.

Section 29.5 of the Copyright Act includes exceptions for performances in educational settings.

It is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution or a person acting under its authority to do the following acts if they are done on the premises of an educational institution for educational or training purposes and not for profit, before an audience consisting primarily of students of the educational institution, instructors acting under the authority of the educational institution or any person who is directly responsible for setting a curriculum for the educational institution:

(a) the live performance in public, primarily by students of the educational institution, of a work;

(b) the performance in public of a sound recording, or of a work or performer’s performance that is embodied in a sound recording, as long as the sound recording is not an infringing copy or the person responsible for the performance has no reasonable grounds to believe that it is an infringing copy;

(c) the performance in public of a work or other subject-matter at the time of its communication to the public by telecommunication; and

(d) the performance in public of a cinematographic work, as long as the work is not an infringing copy or the person responsible for the performance has no reasonable grounds to believe that it is an infringing copy.

Section 30.04 of the Copyright Act permits the reuse of material publicly available on the internet, provided certain conditions are met:

  • The work is a non-infringing copy, legally obtained, without digital locks or visible notices preventing or prohibiting sharing and reuse
  • The purpose of the use is education or training
  • The audience consists primarily of students on the premises of an educational institution
  • The copy includes attribution including source, author, performer, creator, broadcaster if applicable.