Tag Archives: #fairdealingweek

Copyright: The Card Game!

Posted on by
Reply

Do you remember that old Shakespeare quote, “To study or not to study copyright, that is the question”? Well, maybe it wasn’t him and instead was something Cathy said when we were talking about playing “Copyright: The Card Game!”.

But, I digress. In honour of Fair Dealing/Fair Use Week that happens annually during the last week of February in Canada and the United States, the Copyright Office hosted five teams to duke it out in a friendly game of who knows the most about copyright. It was kind of like Crossfit® and who can exercise the fastest. Rumour has it that many of the teams pulled all-nighters and diligently scoured the USask copyright website for hints, tips and other advantages. While noshing on Skittles (#DYK they have been in North America since 1979) and peanut butter M&Ms (which Kate accidentally bought instead of normal M&Ms), to a carefully curated 80s Spotify playlist, teams passionately hovered over their cards in hopes to answer the copyright questions posed by Kate. Critical thinking and the highly competitive nature (who knew!?) of library staff helped bring out the copyright ringers on each team (I’m looking at you Myles!).

At the end of the game, after some well-argued-for bonus points had been awarded, we had to go to a tie-breaker between the Legal Eagles and BrainSTEMS!. BrainSTEMS! edged out the Legal Eagles by milliseconds on the squeezing of the squeaky toy to give the correct answer. Congratulations to Team BrainSTEMs! on their inaugural win!

Thank you to all who attended and supported this event – Team TBD ©, Circulation Formation, The Infringers, Legal Eagles and BrainSTEMS! We look forward to seeing you for the second annual Copyright: The Card Game event!

“I Support Fair Dealing”: Quick Advocacy for Fair Copyright

Posted on by
Reply

by Kate Langrell, Copyright Coordinator

This week is Fair Dealing Week 2018. Fair Dealing Week is an annual event to educate and raise awareness about the many benefits of the fair dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act. This exception helps to balance the rights of copyright owners with the needs of those who use copyright-protected materials for certain purposes, including research, private study and education.

Some common, practical activities that fair dealing may cover include:

  • University professors and instructors handing out a short excerpt from a book to students enrolled in their classes, without having to seek copyright clearance every time
  • Students compiling resources in order to study, write papers or do projects for their coursework
  • Sharing of materials between a team of researchers, facilitating collaboration

Fair Dealing Week is also key opportunity for fair dealing advocacy. The Copyright Act is being reviewed by the federal government this year, and the loss of fair dealing for educational purposes would be a considerable blow to all Canadian educational institutions.

I think that anyone who has done advocacy work is likely to tell you that advocacy is, by no means, a “quick” activity overall. With the busyness of day-to-day library work, it can easily fall by the wayside. However – if you have 10 minutes this week that can be spent offering your support for Fair Dealing, here are few quick opportunities for you:

  • Sign the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUTs’) petition in support of Fair Dealing at caut.ca/petition
    • CAUT has created this petition in “support [of] preserving balance in the Copyright Act by protecting the fair dealing rights of students and educators.” (http://copyright.caut.ca/petition)
  • Submit your own Fair Dealing testimonial at http://fair-dealing.ca/testimonial/
  • Share or post about Fair Dealing on social media
    • Check out the hashtags #fairdealing, #fairdealingweek, #faircopyright and #fairdealingworks this week to catch the fair dealing discussion, and tweet/retweet about it to your heart’s content!
    • In January 2018, CAUT launched a Twitter campaign encouraging creators to Tweet a picture of themselves (a.k.a., a selfie) with the copyright-protected work(s) that they have created, and caption it something to the effect of “I am a creator and I support #fairdealing.” If that is true of you, please consider Tweeting this @CAUT_ACPPU.