This is part one in a four-part series of blog posts celebrating Fair Dealing Week (February 20–24, 2017). 

Fair Dealing Week (Fair Use Week in the United States) is the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)’s annual celebration of fair dealing. To mark Fair Dealing Week, we’ll be blogging about it all week. These posts will outline why fair dealing is important, what fair dealing means to instructors, and how fair dealing applies to students.

Fair dealing is a right in the Copyright Act (Section 29) which allows the copying and communicating of copyrighted works without permission from or payment to the copyright holder. The Supreme Court of Canada has established a two-part, six-factor test for determining fair dealing:

Step One: Determine if your use of a copyrighted work is covered by any of the purposes enumerated in the Copyright Act: research, private study, criticism, news reporting, education, parody, or satire.

Step Two: If your use does fall under one of these purposes, then you can proceed to applying each of the six factors the Supreme Court identified. The six factors are: purpose (different from the purpose in the first step), character, amount, alternatives, nature, and effect.

If your use of a copyrighted work passes both of these steps, it can be deemed fair dealing. To clarify the determination of fair dealing, Dalhousie has developed a set of Fair Dealing Guidelines, in cooperation with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. These guidelines apply to all members of the Dalhousie University community — faculty, staff and students.

For more information, consult the Dalhousie Libraries Copyright Office’s Fair Dealing Basics page, and the Fair Dealing Guidelines. Contact the Copyright Office with any questions or comments at copyright.office@dal.ca