What constitutes Fair Dealing in an educational environment

A recent article in University Affairs on copyright in the academy may be of interest to the UBC community. The article, “Copyright back in the spotlight with several impending decisions” (21 September, 2016) by Anqi Shen, reviews a current Ontario court case in which Access Copyright (a copyright collective society registered with the Copyright Board of Canada) is seeking redress from York University for what it believes to be unfair copying at the school. York, like many universities (including UBC), decided in 2012 to decline the collective society’s copying tariff for reproducing copyrighted works, relying instead on a set of fair dealing guidelines developed by Universities Canada. The article provides comments from Access, librarians and legal scholars regarding the issues raised in the case and further notes that a mandatory review of the Copyright Act, scheduled for 2017, will provide another opportunity to achieve a balance between the rights of authors and those of users of copyright works for education, research and private study purposes.