Complying with Copyright in the Digital Age

This session was delivered by Erin Finlay, Legal Counsel, Access Copyright). Considering that a) she is a lawyer and b) she works for Access Copyright, I was not very surprised at Ms. Finlay's interpretation of the current copyright law as it applies to libraries. She began the session by giving an overview of some of the main concepts around copyright in Canada:

• the Berne Convention protects copyright laws internationally, so that each signatory country agrees to honour the copyright law in the country in which the use of the work happens


• copyright only applies to a fixed original work (although she did remind us that courts have ruled that a phone book has enough original content to be called an original work…)


• rights apply when there is use of “a substantial part of a work” (her legal interpretation is that any part that is significant enough for someone to want to use it can thus be called “substantial”)


• unlike copyright, moral rights are never transferred to the publisher or any other copyright owner – these remain with the author, and allow for protection of the integrity of the work (an author can only challenge his or her moral right if the use in question prejudices the author’s honour or reputation)

She then engaged the participants in a discussion of “What is a copy?” (her interpretation, not surprisingly, was quite broad)

• BMG Music vs. John Doe – in this Canadian court case, BMG Music wanted an Internet service provider to give up the names of users who were downloading music illegally. According to her, the federal court judgment’s decision has given many the impression that peer-to-peer is not illegal in Canada [the exact passage from this decision is: “Under Act, subsection 80(1), the downloading of a song for a person's private use does not constitute infringement.”]. As a result, Canada now hosts the five largest peer-to-peer websites in the world.


• There are a number of defenses available to users, but according to her these need to be used independently (institutions cannot mix and match) between Fair Use and the Educational Exemption

A representative from the CLA Copyright Committee spoke up during the Q&A -- she announced that the committee will soon post to the CLA website all-new signage that libraries can post next to photocopiers and scanners instead of the current Access Copyright signage. From what I heard through the grapevine, these will apparently be significantly different from the signage distributed by Access Copyright.