Canada’s Copyright Act balances the needs of two groups: copyright owners and users of copyright-protected works.
It’s useful to think about a copyright owner having two types of rights:
1. Economic
2. Moral
These rights are automatically held by the copyright owner upon creation of a work; only the copyright owner can waive them or transfer them to someone else.
1. Economic rights give copyright owners the right to be compensated when their works that are used by others. There are several types of economic rights such as:
- Reproduction:
- Right of reproduction: gives copyright owners the exclusive right to produce a work and make subsequent reproductions of the work or parts of it. The copyright owner is also the only person who can authorize others to make reproductions of their work. Examples of reproduction are: photocopying a magazine article or downloading files from the Internet.
- Public Performance:
- Right of public performance gives copyright owners the exclusive right to perform their work in public. Examples of public performance include: showing a TV broadcast or film, playing music, or having your students perform a play in class.
- Publication:
- Right of publication gives copyright owners the exclusive right to make a work available to the public (with some exceptions). Examples of publication are: publishing a journal article or a book.
- Distribution:
- Right of distribution gives copyright owners the exclusive rights to share a work. Examples of distribution are: uploading a file to a Moodle or emailing an article to a colleague
- Conversion and transfer (to a different medium), and
- translation and adaptation.
Economic rights can be transferred in various ways. Generally, however, there are two forms of transfer:
- a transfer of ownership, which is usually called an “assignment”
- transfer of only certain rights (eg. the right to make copies of a book for a class) also called a licence.
Where you see a creator’s work published by someone else (a journal publisher, an edited collection, an anthology, etc.), the creator has likely transferred the copyright in the work, or has granted a licence for some of their rights, to the publisher.
For example, if the author of a journal article transfers some or all of these economic rights to the journal publisher (like the exclusive first right to publish in Canada), they may no longer be able to authorize certain uses of the article (e.g., copying the article and distributing it to students).So, if you want to use a published work, even if the creator may not be able to grant permission, they may no longer have the authority to grant those permissions if they transferred ownership to the publisher.
2. Moral rights protect the reputation of creators and the integrity of their work. That means creators can choose to have their name associated with their work, use a pseudonym, or remain anonymous.
Authors can also protect the integrity of their work from actions that
- distort, mutilate or otherwise modify their work in a way that is prejudicial to the author’s honour and reputation, or
- associate their work with a product, institution, or cause.
A creator cannot assign or transfer their moral rights, however a creator can decide not to make use of their moral rights, and waive them.
3. There is another protection afforded to copyright owners by the Copyright Act: Copyright owners can use technological protection measures, sometimes referred to as TPMs or digital locks.
TPMs or digital locks use encryption technology to control access to works and to prevent unauthorized copying of content. You may encounter these TPMs or digital locks on movies, games, and software. An example of this is an e-book that has limits on the number of pages that can be downloaded or printed. Only the copyright owner can authorize removing or circumventing TPMs (i.e. a user must ask permission from the copyright owner & you cannot override it). There are limited exceptions that allow for TPM circumvention, such as for persons with perceptual disabilities.
If you have any questions email library@stfx.ca
