April 12, 2012
Gillian Tuck Kutarna

Bill C-11 An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, known in its short form as the ‘Copyright Modernization Act’, is now going to the House of Commons for its Third Reading, and could be enacted as law as early as June, 2012.

For school boards, key advantages of this Act will include the ability to:

• use copyrighted materials for the purpose of education, provided such use is "fair", that is, does not unduly threaten the interests of the copyright owner;
• use publicly available material on the Internet, provided it is for educational purposes, and has been posted by the copyright owners without expectation of compensation;
• share lessons that include copyrighted sections over the Internet;
• digitally transmit copyrighted course material to students online, subject to fair compensation for the copyright holders;
• show films or recordings of broadcasts for educational purposes;
• record a news program or a news commentary program (excluding documentaries) in order to replay in class.

Intellectual property laws typically attempt to balance the need to compensate the producer with ensuring reasonable access to the user, while trying to keep pace with unauthorized practices which technological advances inevitably facilitate. Whether the right balance has been struck here remains to be seen. We must hope that its enactment will not give schools a short term cost advantage at the expense of long term availability of quality Canadian content.