What is Fair Dealing?
Section 29 of the Copyright Act defines Fair Dealing in education. The Act states that Fair Dealing for research, private study, education, parody, or satire does not infringe copyright. Understanding Fair Dealing can be confusing, the following section includes guidelines to assist faculty and staff in their day-to-day use of copyrighted materials.
Most materials are copyright-protected. Fair Dealing is an exemption in the Copyright Act that allows for using short excerpts without permission provided that:
- The copying is for research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review, or news reporting
- The copying of the materials is considered "fair"
To assess if Fair Dealing applies, consider:
- How are copies shared?
- How is it accessed (i.e. MyCanvas)?
- How much is copied (i.e. less than 10% or a single chapter)?
- Are you copying a substantial amount?
- Will the creation of copies compete with sales of the original work?
- Is there an existing license agreement that prohibits copying?
Always cite the and be sure to link to the source.
We recommend that you use this Fair Dealing Decision Tree created by the University of Ottawa to help you determine if your use is "fair"
A short excerpt is:
- Up to 10% of copyright-protected work (ie. literary work, musical score, sound recording, and audiovisual work)
- One chapter of a book
- A single article from a periodical, newspaper, or magazine
- A single poem, musical score, or artistic work from a copyright-protected work
- An entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated biography, dictionary, or other reference book
*Note: copying multiple short excerpts from the same work is NOT allowed