Copyright at Seneca

Fair Dealing is an exemption or user’s right in the Copyright Act that allows the copying of materials without permission under certain conditions. In order to claim fair dealing, the user must provide attribution/citation to the work and meet two criteria: 

1. The copying must be for one of the following purposes: research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review or news reporting.
2. The use of the material must be considered fair. Six factors were established by the Supreme Court of Canada to determine if a use is fair: purpose, character, amount, alternative, nature, and effect.

Most of the materials found online, such as content from websites, are protected by copyright. The publicly available materials (PAMs) exemption in the Canadian copyright law allows faculty to copy Internet content for the purpose of education. In order to use this exemption, the following conditions must be met:

• Citation is included: The work is cited using basic attribution or using a formal citation style (e.g., APA or MLA).
• No digital lock: There is no technological protection measure/digital lock preventing access to the material, such as log-ins or watermarks.
• Educational use is permitted: There is no clearly visible notice prohibiting educational use. Check terms of use or licence to determine permitted uses.
• Legitimate copy: The material must not be an infringing copy.

What are Technological Protection Measures or Digital Locks?

Digital locks are devices or tools used to protect copyright-protected materials from illegal use. These include read-only documents, password-protected materials, and watermarks on an image.

Section 41.1 of the Copyright Act prohibits the circumvention or breaking of a technological protection measure or digital lock.

Note: There are no educational exemptions that permit the breaking of a digital lock or circumventing the technological protection measure. If a copy is needed and there is a digital lock you must request permission from the copyright holder.

Case studies, such as those published by Harvard Business and Ivey, are copyright-protected. Individual or class licenses to use case studies are purchased directly from the publisher. Note that case studies cannot be shared with your students unless you purchase a class set.

Alternatives to using licensed business cases:

• case studies found in the various library business databases
• case studies found on the internet which are posted by the copyright holder and not password protected

See the Case Studies for Business guide for more tips and links to finding case studies.

Seneca Libraries provides access to a wide range of digital resources, such as eBooks, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, and streaming videos, through licensing agreements with various database vendors.

More Database Tips

Open educational resources or OERs "are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation." (Source)

For more information, see Seneca Faculty Guide to OERs.
 

Examples

• Subjects with open textbooks include: Psychology, Business, ESL, Microbiology
• Open learning resources, such as activities and handouts, include: Writing Your Essay, The Accounting Cycle – Problems, Mathematics (homework exercises)

Generally, when a textbook is adopted for use in a course and the students enrolled in the course are required to purchase the textbook, the publisher of that textbook will give permission to make use of additional accompanying instructional materials like instructor's manuals, assignment workbooks, solutions, and presentation slides. There are some exceptions where publishers will only allow certain solutions to be posted. This information will be in the textbook agreement from the publisher. If unsure contact theservicehub@senecapolytechnic.ca and we will help in getting the correct permissions required.

Modifying Content in Publisher-Issued Slides

You can add content to slides (text or images) but you are not allowed to remove or reproduce the content from the slides.

Coursepacks are custom packages of materials collected for a course usually used in replacement of/for a text. For coursepack photocopying under Xerox's Access Copyright Interim Tariff or Model License, no copying can exceed 20% of a published work or the following, whichever is greater:

• An entire newspaper article or a page
• An entire single short story, play, poem, essay or article from a book or periodical issue (including a set of conference proceedings) containing other works
• An entire entry from an encyclopedia, dictionary, annotated bibliography or similar reference work
• An entire reproduction of an artistic work (including drawing, sculpture, painting, prints, architectural works of art or works of artistic craftsmanship) from a book or periodical issue containing other works

Please note that all limits are based on a semester time frame. You may not copy the percentages allowed on a weekly basis. Cumulative copying is not allowed.

The Copyright Law has a section called “Non-commercial User-generated Content” (section 29.21) which allows Canadians to use copyrighted materials like videos, music, images, and scanned printed materials to create transformative works and share them publicly with some conditions. You can think of this as the "mash-up" exception.

Videos Made for Class Assignments

Videos created by students for class may qualify as mash-ups, however, there are some important conditions that must be followed:

• Legitimate copy: The copyrighted material is a legitimate copy (e.g., you didn’t use a pirated/illegal copy of the item) which includes using music (i.e., pop songs).
• Material is not from a subscription: You didn’t acquire the legitimate material through a contract/subscription that prevents using the item in a mashup (e.g., iTunes, iStock Photo). Always check the terms of use or licence to determine if you can use the material in a mash-up.
• No digital locks: You do not have to break a digital lock to use the material. Digital locks are devices or tools used to protect copyright-protected materials from illegal use. These include read-only documents, password-protected materials, and watermarks on an image. For example, you can’t rip a DVD that has encoding that prevents copying.
• Citation is included: Ensure to indicate, at the very least, the source (e.g., website, book, magazine) and the creator (e.g. author, performer). Check the Citing Sources in Digital Assignments guide for examples of how to cite.
• Non-commercial: Your mash-up is not for promotional or commercial purposes
• Transformative: The material is used to create a transformative work – this new law is meant to encourage creativity and content creation. Transformative works are new, original, creative works that build upon an existing copyrighted work. For example, creating a copy of music video will not be considered transformative.
• No market impact: The use of the material in your video will not impact the market for the material. For example, using an entire Lady Gaga album in a mash-up is not recommended since this could affect the market for the original material by allowing others to access or download the content for free.

Connect with your liaison librarian about creating an online resource list for your course. Leganto is a course resource list tool that allows faculty to create, manage, and share a list of course resources directly on Blackboard. Leganto enables faculty to share various types of course materials including faculty-authored documents, resources from the library collection, YouTube videos, and website links. This tool enables faculty to easily add persistent links to library resources, collect and assess student engagement with course resources, and share course resources which comply with copyright.

Check out the Leganto Overview for Faculty guide for more information.