Fair dealing is a user’s right in copyright law permitting use, or "dealing" with, a copyright-protected work without permission or payment of copyright royalties. The fair dealing exception in the Copyright Act allows you to use other people’s copyright material for the purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody, provided that what you do with the work is "fair". Whether something is considered "fair" will depend on the circumstances, including the amount of material used, and the motives or intentions of the user of the material. For example, using 5% of a copyrighted article for personal academic research is more likely to be considered fair dealing than using 15% of the article for profit-driven corporate research. While each case will be different, depending on the material used, when evaluating whether a dealing is fair, courts will normally consider factors such as:
- the purpose of the dealing (Is it one of the allowable purposes listed above, like research or education? Will the work be used for profit or for commercial reasons?)
- the amount of the dealing (How much was copied?)
- the character of the dealing (What was done with the work? Was it an isolated use or an ongoing, repetitive use? How widely was it distributed?)
- alternatives to the dealing (Was the work necessary for the end result? Could the purpose have been achieved without using the work?)
- the nature of the work (Is there a public interest in its dissemination? Was it previously unpublished?)
- the effect of the dealing on the original work (Does the use compete with the market of the original work?)
Your use does not need to meet every one of these factors in order to be fair, and no one factor is determinative by itself. In assessing whether your use is fair, a court would look at these factors as a whole to determine if, on balance, your use is fair.
If the use can be characterized as "fair" according to these considerations, it will fall within the fair dealing exception and will not require permission from the copyright holder. If your purpose is criticism, review, or news summary, you must also mention the source and author of the work for it to be fair dealing.
Note: for further clarity and additional information about limits on the amount and nature of copying permitted under fair dealing in certain contexts, please see the University’s Fair Dealing Guidelines.
Additional note: it’s important to distinguish "fair dealing" from "fair use". The fair use exception in U.S. copyright law is NOT the equivalent of fair dealing in Canadian law. The wording and scope of the two exceptions are different. It is important to make sure that you consider the Canadian law and aren’t relying on U.S. information.