The Association of Canadian Publishers has formed the Read Aloud Canadian Books Program with Access Copyright. They issued a statement about their new program to allow libraries and educators to do licensed virtual story times. They have not discussed how this impacts the private agreements and terms that individual libraries have made with rights holders prior to this announcement. At this time, ReSound has not issued a statement on how they are licensing music for digital story times at this time. If you have questions or concerns about your musical licensing, please contact them directly.
What is fair dealing?
Fair dealing recognizes that certain uses of copyright protected works are beneficial for society. The usage of these works without the express permission of the rights holder is referred to as fair dealing. Fair dealing is referred to as the right of the public, whereas copyright is the right of the creator. Copyright can be sold or transferred, so it is simpler to say “rights holder”. It’s important to remember that copyright and fair dealing are defined by court rulings, so if an issue is in the (very large) grey area that hasn’t been addressed, it is difficult to know exactly what uses are considered “fair”. A substantial part of a work can be used for free under fair dealing, which is determined by the following criteria:
Purpose- Allowable purposes include: private study, research, criticism, review, newspaper summary, parody, satire, or education. Education is the one most frequently used by libraries. While non-commercial purposes are generally preferred, but that doesn’t mean commercial purposes are never “fair”.
Character– How the work is used. Making multiple copies and retaining them is less “fair” than making one copy that was destroyed. Custom or standard practice can also be used here to determine fairness. Story times are an established custom by non-profits, and serve a socially beneficial purpose.
Amount- How much of the work is used in the dealing. The general allowed amount is 10% of a work, although there are exceptions.
Alternatives- Are there non-copyrighted alternatives to the work, or is a license available? With digital story times, by creating a license, Access Copyright has made it more difficult for libraries to use this argument to say their digital story times are fair dealing, since there are licenses for multiple works available for free, provided you follow the guidelines.
Nature- Nature refers to the public availability of a work, i.e. published versus unpublished. Canadian Copyright, contrary to American and British custom, tends to favour use of unpublished work as more “fair” than using a published work.
Effect- The impact on the work, i.e., does the use of the work compete with, or act as a substitute for, the work? In the case of digital story times, the effect is minimal, and may even serve to promote the book.
Story time, whether online or in person, is a “public performance,” which is an exclusive right of the rights holder to use or sell. Generally, when story times are held in a library, it is unquestioned as it is a social norm, which is widely accepted as having value to the public. The issue with digital story times comes when items are saved to a page, shared, and/or archived. This shifts the performance from a one time reading in an enclosed space to a finite audience, to a repeatable, unending performance of a work to a global audience. Videos marked as public on YouTube return in search results. Even items marked as unlisted can be found by anyone who possesses the link, for as long at the video is up. “Live” performances help, as they are one time, but there is little to stop people from recording and sharing it.
A March 24, 2020 article on Programming Librarian discussed the US Copyright exception around fair use, which is similar to fair dealing. If you are doing research and come across articles that say “fair use,” they refer to US law, and the advice may not be applicable to the Canadian legal structure. While this article does a good job of demystifying some issues around digital story times, the advice is not wholly applicable to Canadian educators performing digital story times, especially after the licensing offered by Access Copyright. The author’s conclusion of: it’s fine, don’t ask for permission because no one would sue a library, veers from an analysis of the law into what the author hopes is a likely result.
Copyright law tends to be gentler on new forms of transmission, but also stipulates that the method of transmission is less important than the result. In the case of story times, this seems to imply that a digital story time is to be treated the same as an in-person one, as long as there is no retained copy of the performance. This would be contradictory to the original, ephemeral format of in-person story times. So, while there is legal precedent in favour of doing story times and other programs digitally, there is less foundation for having these in a searchable, permanently stored format.
The Copyright Modernization Act was intended to “spur competition and foster innovation by ensuring that businesses have the flexibility to develop and offer innovative products and services to consumers, provided they fall within the permitted scope of the law.”[1] A main principle of this update is technological neutrality. This means that the Act applies equally to traditional and more advanced forms of the same media. This means that the method of delivery of the work to the end user cannot be used to impose additional copyright royalties.
The question with broadcasts is whether the communication is considered to be “to the public”. The court recognizes a difference in “push” and “pull” technology. Internet videos generally fall into the “pull” category, since users have to access a social media page or URL to view the story time. This technology, like streaming music, must be triggered by individual users, and therefore are not “to the public”. One of the current debates in copyright is how to treat broadcasting and streaming equally, and whether they should be. If digital story times are considered broadcasts, then different rules and licensing fees could apply.
If you have any questions about Copyright, please contact Jen at jkendall@prl.ab.ca.
[1] Industry Canada, What the Copyright Act Means for Business Innovation <http://balancedcopyright.gc.ca/eic/site/crp-prda.nsf/eng/rp01187.html>.