Fair Dealing Week: Understanding user’s copy right

During this week of February 24-28 the University of Manitoba, along with other Canadian and American educational institutions, recognizes the annual Fair Dealing / Fair Use Week. Fair Dealing / Fair Use Week is an annual initiative of the Association of Research Libraries.

What is Fair Dealing?

Fair Dealing is a provision in Canada’s Copyright Act that grants an exception to copyright protection for specified purposes such as research and education, as long as the use is fair. Fair dealing aims to strike a balance between the rights of the creator and the rights of the user–allowing for the use of a limited portion, or “short excerpts,” of copyright protected materials.

Some of the guidelines around fair dealing include citing all copyrighted material used–including clipart, images, videos and audio recordings–and ensuring that you are using only short excerpts, generally up to 10% of a work. Other options include obtaining permission from the publisher or copyright owner or using materials in the public domain or Creative Commons. You can find out more about what constitutes “fair dealing” on our UM Copyright Guidelines (pdf).

Why Fair Dealing matters

Students, faculty, instructors, librarians and support staff make use of Fair Dealing on a regular basis for educational, private study and research purposes. For instance, faculty or students copying a chapter or an article for research purposes may be exercising their Fair Dealing rights.

Take some time during the week of February 24-28 to learn more about Fair Dealing and how it works: Register now for our new Copyright Tutorial.

If you have questions about Fair Dealing or other aspects of copyright, contact the Copyright Office at um [dot] copyright [at] umanitoba [dot] ca

For general inquiries, contact the Copyright Office at um_copyright [at] umanitoba [dot] ca or 204-474-7277 / 9607. Copyright Guidelines and other resources are available on the Copyright Office website.