This is part four in a five-part series of blog posts celebrating Fair Dealing Week 2021 (February 22nd to February 26th, 2021).

by Lachlan MacLeod

The copyright landscape in Canada has undergone significant changes recently. To ensure a fair and reasonable approach to the use of copyright protected materials on campus, Dalhousie has sought to balance the rights of users with those of creators. To help accomplish this, the University has established a Copyright Office and has most recently adopted updated Fair Dealing Guidelines.

As students of Dalhousie University, you may copy materials for which the university (e.g. the Library) has negotiated licenses, according to the terms of the individual license agreements. In addition to license agreements, fair dealing allows you to make use of a work for yourself for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, news reporting, education, parody or satire. As an example, this means you can copy one article from a journal, or one chapter from a book for the purpose of your studies and research.

Without fair dealing, any time you wished to make use of a copyrighted work in your course, you would need permission from the copyright holder, perhaps even paying a licensing fee. This short presentation illustrates uses that we might take for granted and would not be legal without fair dealing:

For more information on how fair dealing affects Students, please take some time to read about Fair Dealing for Students, and consult our Fair Dealing Guidelines. Please feel free to contact the Copyright Office with any questions or comments at copyright.office@dal.ca