Copyright is the legal protection of literary, dramatic, artistic, and musical works, sound recordings, performances, and communications signals which provides creators with the legal right to be paid and control the use of their creations. In Canada, copyright is protected through the federal government’s Copyright Act.
Departments and ministries of education across the country encourage copyright awareness in the school systems and postsecondary institutions, as well as respect for the copyright laws and agreements that govern the country.
In a 1995 Statement on Copyright, all the jurisdictions, with the exception of Quebec, which has its own approach to copyright, outlined their position on copyright issues related to education and advanced amendments that addressed the position of the provinces and territories. Since 1999, the 12 jurisdictions have collaborated on this issue through the CMEC Copyright Consortium.
The consortium believes that in order to serve the public and educational interests, the Copyright Act must balance two equally important rights:
- the rights of creators to control the use of their works and to receive compensation for such use
- the rights of the education community to have fair access to created works
Educational Use of the Internet
To ensure the continuation of these rights in the new digital age, the consortium, in concert with many other educational organizations across the country, is asking the federal government to change the existing copyright law in order to make it clear that the educational use of publicly available Internet material is not an infringement of copyright. The concern is that the law is not clear about the extent to which teachers, students, and other educational users can legally engage in routine classroom activities such as downloading, saving, and sharing of texts or images that are freely available on the Internet.
The CMEC Copyright Consortium is urging that the Government of Canada adopt an education amendment in the Copyright Act to permit the educational use of freely available Internet materials. Other key educational organizations are also urging the government to adopt this amendment:
The consortium has published bulletins and resources to support understanding of copyright issues in education:
- Copyright Bulletins – To underscore the significance of the education amendment and to explain its implications and limitations, a series of information bulletins has been developed
- Copyright Matters! – To inform teachers and educators about copyright issues, a booklet, Copyright Matters!, is available on the CMEC Web site