Teachers, Copyright, and Fair Dealing – Know your rights and know your limits!

Thinking of using a short excerpt from a copyright-protected work in your classroom? First, find out if you need permission from the copyright owner. The Fair Dealing Decision Tool helps teachers decide, with just a few clicks, whether fair dealing permits classroom use of short excerpts from print materials, artistic works, or audiovisual materials without needing to obtain copyright permission.

It takes 30 seconds on FairDealingDecisionTool.ca to determine if the intended use is fair dealing.

Every teacher should bookmark the Fair Dealing Decision Tool: www.FairDealingDecisionTool.ca

CMEC Copyright Consortium and National Education Organizations Release New Edition of Copyright Matters! – news releaseDownload
Le Consortium du droit d’auteur du CMEC, de concert avec des organisations pancanadiennes de l’éducation, publient la nouvelle édition du guide Le droit d’auteur… ça compte! – communiqueéDownload

Copyright advocacy and reform update in 2022

In this University Affairs article, author Michal Jamorski presents an argument against the Access Copyright claim that the education community’s use of fair dealing is the key reason for the decline in authors’ income.

COVID – 19 Update

  • Copyright law is not suspended when a state of emergency arises.
  • With the cancellation of schools in some of your provinces and territories the question has arisen whether copyright rules should continue to be followed. In looking at alternate means of providing materials to students, the same copyright rules — and copying limits under fair dealing — continue to apply.
  • For example, a teacher can post a few photos of a textbook on Facebook under fair dealing guidelines; however, a teacher cannot post a full textbook on Facebook, or a chapter per week for several weeks because at the end of these weeks the textbook may have been posted entirely.
  • Teachers should continue to reference www.FairDealingDecisionTool.ca for their copyright questions. The Fair Dealing Decision Tool allows teachers to determine whether copying requires copyright permission or is permitted without permission because it falls within the Fair Dealing Guidelines.
  • If a teacher has further questions respecting the use of copyrighted-protected materials, the teacher should contact her/his ministry of education and/or school board.

There is a great on-line resource to help teachers determine whether fair dealing permits them to use short excerpts from copyright-protected materials for the students in their classrooms.

Fairdealingdecisiontool.ca helps teachers decide, with a few clicks, whether the fair-dealing provision in the Copyright Act permits copying of short excerpts from print materials, artistic works, or audiovisual materials for students without having to get copyright permission.

So, the next time you wonder, “Can I use this in the classroom? Can I copy it?” the answer is at your fingertips! It takes 30 seconds on fairdealingdecisiontool.ca to have your copyright questions answered. By clicking through this user-friendly resource, teachers will know how to apply fair dealing and whether their use of the copyright-protected materials is “fair.”

Fairdealingdecisiontool.ca informs teachers about their rights and obligations when they use copyright-protected works of others. It will ensure that they better understand the law and the application of the Fair Dealing Guidelines. There are other important copyright resources all teachers should become familiar with:

All of these resources can be printed for teachers’ easy reference.

Fairdealingdecisiontool.ca is a helpful resource to keep teachers on the right side of the law. It is important for teachers to know their rights under Canada’s copyright law, and it is very important for them to know their limits. When in doubt about whether a use is fair dealing, use the Copyright Decision Tool.

Visit (and bookmark!): fairdealingdecisiontool.ca

Additional documentation regarding our advocacy efforts for Fair Dealing: