Please note: This guide does not provide legal advice. It is intended to give guidance about acceptable use of copyright protected materials.
Remember that just because you have the right to copy and share something doesn't mean you can share it without credit or copyright information. For example, book chapters should include the title page and copyright page.
Fair dealing is a concept in Canadian copyright law that recognizes that certain uses of copyright-protected works do not require permission from the copyright holder. It applies to all types of works and is subject to limits--tests of fairness must be applied.
Fair Dealing allows limited and non-commercial copying or use of a work for the purposes of research or private study, criticism, review and news reporting, education, parody or satire.
A single copy of a short excerpt (see definitions of short excerpt below) from a copyright-protected work may be provided or communicated to each student enrolled in a a class or course:
(a) as a class handout (includes emailing to students)
(b) as a posting to a learning or course management system that is password protected or otherwise restricted to, and accessible only by, students in the specific course, unit or program; or
A short excerpt means (Use one of (a)-(g) whichever is most most useful or appropriate):
(a) up to 10% of a copyright-protected work (including a literary work, musical score, sound recording, and an audiovisual work)
(b) one chapter from a book
(c) a single article from a periodical issue
(d) an entire artistic work (including a painting, print, photograph, diagram, drawing, map, chart and plan) from a copyright-protected Work containing other artistic works
(e) an entire newspaper article or page
(f) an entire single poem or musical score from a copyright-protected work containing other poems or musical scores;
(g) an entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary or similar reference work
Note: when using any paper or scanned/electronic copy it is standard academic practice to mention the source and author of the work. When copying or communicating short excerpts from a copyright-protected work for the purpose of news reporting, criticism or review, you should mention the source and, if given in the source, the name of the author or creator of the work.
Note: a copyright-protected work includes films, music, artistic works as well as books.
Fair Dealing is very context-dependent, so only you can determine if your use is fair. There isn't one answer that applies to all contexts and works.
For example,
Note: Copying or communicating multiple short excerpts from the same copyright-protected work, with the intention of copying or communicating substantially the entire work, is prohibited. All limits are based on a semester time frame. You may not copy the percentages allowed on a weekly basis.
Remember that no single factor is decisive of fair dealing, and on any given factor, you may find that some aspects of your proposed use favor fair dealing, while others simultaneously "weigh against" fair dealing.
Below are several links created by various organizations that can help you determine if the use is fair.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0.
Content from this guide adapted from KPU Copyright Guide under creative commons license.