This guide and the resources included within are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, except as otherwise noted. Questions and requests may be directed to Meaghan Shannon, Copyright Librarian at Queen's University: meaghan.shannon@queensu.ca.
For answers to a variety of frequently asked questions, please visit Copyright FAQs.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Copyright Advisory Office for assistance: qcopy@queensu.ca.
Educational use is a blanket license to use copyright-protected works?
Copyright is a legal mechanism that intends to establish a balance between the rights (economic and moral rights) that are granted to authors of works and the rights that are granted to users of copyright-protected works. The exceptions in the Copyright Act are intended to balance an author's or copyright owner's economic rights and copyright interests with the public's interest in using works for specific purposes under specific conditions. There are a number of exceptions in the Copyright Act that are intended to used by educational institutions and people acting under the authority of an educational institution in order to facilitate courses and deliver curriculum. Such exceptions permit displaying a work for students, performing a wok for students, facilitating tests and exams, and incorporating publicly accessible content into course materials. These exceptions do require that specific prescribed conditions are met. Fair dealing is also an exception in the Copyright Act and it permits the use of copyright-protected works for the purpose of education, research, private study, criticism, review, parody, or satire. In order to determine whether a dealing with a copyright-protected work is likely to constitute fair dealing, a six factor fair dealing assessment must be conducted. While 'educational use' is not a blanket license to use copyright-protected works without restrictions or authorization or permission from authors or copyright owners, it is possible to use copyright-protected works for educational purposes within the scope of exceptions in the Copyright Act, the Fair Dealing Requirements (Appendix a of Queen's University's Copyright Compliance and Administration Policy), and various license agreements that the university has entered into with copyright owners and representative organizations.
For more information about the educational use of copyright-protected works, please see our Copyright in the Classroom, Copyright in Course Sites, Categories of Content, and Media Production pages. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Copyright Advisory Office for assistance: qcopy@queensu.ca.
A book that is out of print is within the scope of the public domain?
It is possible that an out of print books is within the scope of the public domain but these two terms actually mean two different things:
Out of Print: when publishing a book, an author will generally transfer some or all of their economic rights to a publisher but the term of copyright protection will continue to run on the author's lifetime + 70 years after their death. A book is generally published in print runs (ie first, second, third...printings) which involve producing bulk amounts of copies of that book. If a publisher determines that subsequent print runs are no longer economically viable, they may decide to label the book as being out of print but they will retain the rights to that book until the term of copyright protection lapses.
Public Domain: a work is within the scope of the public domain when the term of copyright protection (the author's lifetime + 70 years after the author's death) has lapsed. When a work is within the scope of the public domain, it can be used without restrictions but the author and the work should be acknowledged when the work, or content from the work, is used for academic purposes.
For more information about categories of copyright status, the term of copyright protection, and the public domain, please see our Overview of Copyright page.
Available Online means Open Access?
Actually, 'available online' and 'open access' mean two different things:
Publicly Accessible Online Content: the content was protected by copyright at the time it was created and remains protected, with both economic and moral rights in effect, until the term of copyright protection (the author's lifetime + 70 years after the author's death) has lapsed or unless otherwise specified by a Creative Commons license or a clearly visible notice.
Open Access: the content was protected by copyright at the time it was created but the author(s) decided to waive their economic rights at the time of publication.
For more information about categories of copyright status, please see our Overview of Copyright page.
Copyright protects facts and ideas?
Copyright protects artistic, dramatic, literary, and musical works as well as performers' performances, sound recordings, and communication signals. This encompasses a wide range of content, from books, articles, posters and artwork, textbooks and manuals, figures and maps, songs and musical scores, films and documentaries, to software, databases, and websites. In order for a work to be protected by copyright, it must be original and it must be fixed in a format (ie a written article or a recorded song). Copyright protection will not apply to facts or ideas but it will apply to the expression of them. For more information about what copyright is and how it works, please see our Overview of Copyright page.
Fair Dealing means a cumulative 10% of a copyright-protected work can be used without authorization or permission from the copyright owner?
Actually, 'up to 10%' is intended to address a page range of up to 10% of a copyright-protected material or work. If one page range constitutes 7% of a copyright-protected material or work, for example, that page range could be used in accordance with the Fair Dealing Requirements (Appendix A of Queen's University's Copyright Compliance and Administration Policy) but we would not find an additional 3% from that same copyright-protected material or work in an effort to reach the 10% figure. One page range of up to 10% of a copyright-protected material or work would constitute 'a short excerpt' in accordance with the Fair Dealing Requirements. Any page range in excess of 10% of a copyright-protected material or work would require authorization or permission from the copyright owner. Any additional page ranges, regardless of their length or brevity, from the same copyright-protected material or work would require authorization or permission from the copyright owner. Please note that '10%' is not mentioned in the Copyright Act nor has it been endorsed by any Canadian courts. For more information about short excerpts from copyright-protected material or works and fair dealing, please see our Overview of Fair Dealing page.
Purchasing a work includes purchasing the rights to that work?
When you purchase a print or physical copy of a work, you will gain the property rights to that tangible object but you will not gain the intellectual property rights, including copyright, to the expressed ideas within that tangible object. The ways in which digital content is offered for sale online can be misleading. While buttons and prompts may be labelled 'buy now' or 'proceed to purchase', it is access to that digital content that is being offered for sale, not the content itself nor the intellectual property rights, including copyright, to that content. For more information about categories or types of content and whether and how they can be used for educational purposes, please see our Categories of Content page.
Creative Commons licenses provide an alternative to copyright?
Creative Commons-licensed content and works are protected by copyright. Authors of Creative Commons-licensed content and works have elected to employ Creative Commons licenses to pre-authorize the use of their copyright-protected content or works by permitting the exercising of some or all of their economic rights and retaining their moral right of attribution. Creative Commons licenses do not provide an alternative to copyright but they do provide an alternative to the traditional processes of granting and requesting authorization or permission on a case-by-case basis. For more information about Creative Commons licenses, please see our Authors' Rights & Course Materials page.
Using a work that was published in another country requires complying with that country's copyright law?
Actually, Canadian copyright law will apply if you are using a work in Canada, regardless of the origin of that work, the country it was published in, or the nationality of the author. Consider a scenario in which a car is imported to Canada from another country: if you drive that imported car in Canada, you'll adhere to Canadian laws (local, provincial, and national) rather than the laws of the country from which the car was imported. For more information about Canadian copyright law, please see our Overview of Copyright page.
I know the author so I'll get permission from them to use their work?
It's important to keep in mind that authors and copyright owners can be the same individuals/entities or they can be two different individuals/entities. When a publisher publishes an author's work, the author will have transferred some, many, or all of their economic rights to the publisher. In this situation, the author remains the author of the work but the publisher becomes the copyright owner. If a work is self-published, authorization or permission can be sought from the author directly because the author is both the author and the copyright owner. If a work has been published by a traditional, commercial, or independent publisher, authorization or permission must be sought from that publisher because the author is the author and the publisher is the copyright owner. For more information about permissions, please see our Permissions & Licensing service page.
This guide is dedicated to Corduroy.