Copyright at Lambton

Lambton College is guided by the Canadian Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42). All staff, students and faculty at Lambton College are expected to adhere to the rules and regulations according to the act in its entirety. Any unauthorized use of copyright materials by staff, students and faculty will be subject to disciplinary action.  

This material has been adapted for Lambton College using information from Copyright at Centennial licensed under a CC-BY-NC license: Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License.

In Canada, copyright is the automatic protection of any original, creative material in fixed format. This includes print materials, written assignments, artwork, photos, videos, DVDs, images, computer software, webpages, emails, wikis and blogs. It allows the copyright owner the exclusive right to reproduce their intellectual property. Copyright protection applies whether a copyright statement appears on the material or not. In Canada, copyright expires 50 years after the death of the work’s creator and the work enters the Public Domain (on December 31, 2022, the expiration of copyright will be extended to life-plus-seventy years due to new USMCA regulations). If the work is created in the course of employment, the employer holds the copyright.  

Copyright protection has a legally defined time period that varies depending on the type of work and who created it. In Canada, that protection extended to life-plus-fifty years (on December 31, 2022, the expiration of copyright will be extended to life-plus-seventy years due to new USMCA regulations). When protection ends on a work, it then belongs to the public domain and may be used without permission or the payment of royalties. 

Please note that when it comes to the public domain, it’s the copy-in-hand that counts. For example, the character of Anne of Green Gables, created by L.M. Montgomery is a public domain figure, however, new creators have taken the character of Anne and made it into something of their own (for example, Anne with an E). So, while the original Anne created by L.M.M. is public domain, there are several new copyrighted versions of Anne that are protected by copyright law.  

A Creative Commons (CC) license is in addition to copyright and allows creators to voluntarily make all or parts of their work available without payment or permission. CC licenses can be applied by owners to open textbooks, articles, pictures, videos and more, and are indicated by a symbol (see image). Each symbol describes the CC license applied to the work and its conditions for use. For more information, see Creative Commons: When we share, everyone wins. 

 "Creative Commons Licenses Infographic" by ricardo56 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0  

The fair dealing extension in the Copyright Act outlines everyone's rights when using copyright-protected works. It permits the use of “short excerpts” of copyright material without permission or payment of royalties for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review, or news reporting under certain guidelines.  

Fair Dealing Factors 

You must consider the following Fair Dealing Factors before you copy or distribute a work: 

• The Purpose of the Copying 
  • Is the copying for one of the following purposes: education, research, private study, criticism or review, news reporting, parody or satire? 
  • The copy is not meant to replace your course text 
• The Amount of the Copying 
  • How much is being copied?
    • One chapter from a book or one article from a journal may be considered fair. 
• The Character of the Copying 
  • How broadly will the work be distributed? Will it be accessible only to eligible students? 
• Alternatives to copying the work 
  • Is the same or equivalent work available in the library databases? Is there a non-copyrighted alternative? 
• The Nature of the Work 
  • Is it published or unpublished? 
• The Effect of the Copying on the Work 
  • Will the copying undermine the market for the work? 

Instructors for Lambton College courses may communicate and reproduce, in paper or electronic form, “short excerpts” from a copyright-protected work to their students in a classroom or through their course-assigned D2L. 

Copying or communicating short excerpts from a copyright-protected work under this Fair Dealing Policy for any reason must mention the source and, if given in the source, the name of the author or creator of the work. 

A short excerpt means: 

• Up to 10% of a copyright-protected work (including a literary work, musical score, sound recording, and an audiovisual work) 
• Up to 10% or 1 chapter of a print or electronic book or textbook 
• A single article from a scholarly journal, magazine, newspaper, or other periodical 
• An entire artistic work (including a painting, print, photograph, diagram, drawing, map, chart, and plan) from a copyright-protected work containing other artistic works 
• An entire single poem or musical score from a copyright-protected work containing other poems or musical scores 
• An entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary or similar reference work

A single copy of a short excerpt from a copyright-protected work may be provided or communicated to each student enrolled in a class or course as: 

• A class handout 
• A posting to a learning or course management system that is password protected or otherwise restricted to students of a school or post-secondary educational institution 
• Part of a course pack 

Copying or communicating multiple short excerpts from the same copyright-protected work, with the intention of copying or communicating substantially the entire work, is prohibited. 

An evaluation of whether the proposed copying or communication is permitted under fair dealing will be made based on all relevant circumstances (see Fair Dealing Factors). 

All copies, including the original source, must be legally obtained. Duplicating illegal copies is prohibited by law.  

In an online environment, all materials may only be shared in a Learning Management System (LMS). At Lambton, post to D2L.