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International Law

: Excess Copyright

A Short Quiz: Guess the Source of this Fair Dealing "Guidelines" Document

By Howard Knopf, Esq.

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This document purports to provide "guidelines" to Canadian universities about fair dealing. Readers may be interested in guessing when and from where is emanates. I shall provide two important hints.

Hint #1:

The source is one of the following:

- Access Copyright (?AC?)

- Association of Universities and Colleges Canada (?AUCC?)

Hint #2:

The landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision dealing with fair dealing, namely CCH. v. LSUC, was rendered on March 4, 2004.

This document begins as as follows:

Fair Dealing Policy

I. Copying Guidelines

1. Except where otherwise stated, these guidelines apply to the making by a university [of] a single copy from a work protected by copyright for the purposes of private study or research [sic] in circumstances in which the consent of the owner of copyright has not been secured and is not required by reason of the fair dealing exception in the Copyright Act. Permission from a copyright holder may be required where the copy falls outside of these guidelines.

A few preliminary notes:

- The correct phraseology is ?research or private study? and NOT ?private study or research.? The phraseology as above (i.e. ?private study or research?) is simply wrong. We amended the legislation a long time ago to make the word ?private? modify the word ?study? and not the word ?research?. Details such as this can matter very much in court cases and clearly do matter in the context of the university.

- The document is not even internally consistent on the foregoing point. At one point, it uses the correct phrase ?research or private study?.

- I?ve highlighted some of the more restrictive points on what is supposedly permissible according to the document.

Readers are asked to guess who penned the linked document and when it was written. Guesses and comments can be posted below, anonymously if so wished. Even I won?t know who is the source of the comment, if provided anonymously. As always, I will block or remove defamatory, tasteless or baseless comments. Be constructive.

Full post as published by Excess Copyright on November 12, 2010 (boomark / email).