Library Resources for NMMIT: Copyright

The information in this guide is not meant to be legal advice.

Know your rights and responsibilities under the Copyright Act. Copyright infringement is breaking the federal law and each one of us is responsible to be compliant.

What is Fair Dealing? “Fair Dealing” is one of the exceptions/provisions in the Copyright Act that permits copying or communicating insubstantial/short excerpts of copyrighted-protected work without receiving permission from the copyright owner or the payment of copyright royalties.

Copyright literally means the right to copy. In Canada, all original creative works are protected by copyright as soon as they are fixed in some format. This includes print materials, art work, photos, videos, CDROMs, DVDs, computer software, web pages, emails, wikis and blogs. The Copyright Act grants a series of rights to the copyright owner, who is most often the author or creator of the work. If the work is created in the course of employment, the employer holds the copyright. Only the copyright owner has the right to decide when and how the work is copied. Copyright protection is automatic upon the creation of a work, and applies whether or not a copyright statement appears on the material. The general rule is that copyright expires 50 years after the death of the author. The Copyright Act can be viewed online at http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-42/FullText.html.