ABC Copyright Conference

Beat the crowds and pick up your conference badge and swag early!

Pick up your conference swag in the foyer and a light breakfast in the 2nd floor Atrium.

The planning team is considering reserving some time during the conference for general discussions that focus on questions and topics delegates are interested in learning more about from knowledgeable colleagues, legal experts, and scholars.  Please note that these discussions would not represent formal legal advice from the respondents, planning committee, or CAAL-CBPA.

If you are interested in this type of session, please provide questions or topics of interest in this form (opens in new tab). Be sure to indicate if you would like your name attached to the question

Traditional Mi'kmaw welcome with Catherine Martin, Director of Indigenous Community Engagement and opening remarks.

The Dalhousie University Senate acknowledges that we are in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People and pays respect to the Indigenous knowledges held by the Mi’kmaq People, and to the wisdom of their Elders past and present. The Mi'kmaq People signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the Crown, and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and Treaty rights. We are all Treaty people.

We recognize that African Nova Scotians are a distinct people whose histories, legacies, and contributions have enriched that part of Mi'kma'ki, currently known as Nova Scotia, for over 400 years.

Through the pandemic, controlled digital lending (CDL) emerged as a legal lifeline for libraries seeking to provide access to their collections remotely. Since then, in both the US and Canada, CDL has continued to drive innovation in library access. Dave Hansen, Executive Director of Authors Alliance and co-author of the US position statement and legal white paper on controlled digital lending, will explain the most recent developments in the pivotal Hachette v. Internet Archive fair use case and offer points of comparison and contrast with CDL under fair dealing in Canada.

Refreshments available in the atrium during this break!

Copyright guidance at an academic library is often provided at the nexus of the law, University policy, and the personal and professional values of the librarians and users involved in the decision making. An institution’s tolerance for risk (or lack-thereof) can create tension with librarians’ value systems. The law is often vague, leaving lots of room for differences of interpretation between University administrators, librarians, and users. Professional values, like the ones articulated by the ACRL Framework generally align with enhancing/supporting user’s rights and tend towards a copyleft point of view. Institutional risk tolerance complicates decision making further – higher levels of risk are generally accepted with research and teaching endeavours. Risk is often less acceptable when it comes to compliance with the law (like the Copyright Act). Lack of clarity in the law and institutional risk tolerance can be at odds with professional values, which can confuse users and can undermine librarians providing guidance.   This session will provide an overview of a framework I'm exploring for copyright decision making, with an open invitation to discuss how folks handle this issue at their institutions.  

In 2022 the Canadian Association of Research Libraries struck a working group to create a Canadian adaptation of the US Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources. Intended to address the relative lack of practical guidance for OER developers regarding the use of third-party copyrighted material in open educational resources (OER), the Canadian Code provides a judicious and legally sound basis for the application of the fair dealing exception in the context of OER creation.    

As of late 2023, the working group has completed their adaptation and is developing dissemination and implementation strategies to support the Code’s use and adoption by institutions and OER practitioners across Canada. This session will introduce attendees to the Code and provide background on its development, but will primarily focus on the Code content, including;
- An overview of differences between the US and Canadian codes, with references to the Canadian legal environment and supporting legal analysis.
- A discussion of the four key use cases outlined in the Code and practical application of the code for OER creators.
- A review of Appendix Three: Indigenous Knowledge and Considerations for Inclusion in OER, which is original to the Canadian Code.
- How the code is intended to be used and suggestions on institutional adoption and implementation.

We also intend to leave time for comments and questions at the end of the session. Note: The final Code will be made available publicly in advance of ABC and while it will be beneficial if attendees have some familiarity with it in advance, previous knowledge of the Code is not required.

Does a fear of copyright infringement hamper the work of academics and/or prevent the legitimate sharing of course materials? Does it impact the work of libraries and library staff? If so, how does this vary between the UK and Canada? This session presents the results of a research project that used an adapted Copyright Anxiety Scale and focus groups to learn more about the phenomena of copyright anxiety and chill.

Chris and Jane run the website copyrightliteracy.org, are co-chairs of the ALT Copyright and Online Learning Special Interest Group and are members of the Universities UK Copyright Negotiation and Advisory Committee which negotiates with collective management organisations for UK HE institutions.

Network with your colleagues and enjoy a takeaway lunch!

Library employees routinely create content that is subject to copyright, ranging from web pages to video tutorials to photographs to social media posts. Yet in most cases these contributions are invisible, as the creativity and intellectual effort of employee authors is typically unacknowledged.  At the University of Guelph, we endeavoured to bring the works of employees into the spotlight by providing attribution on public-facing content whenever possible, while also facilitating downstream uses of their work through the use of open licenses.  In doing so, we hoped to accomplish a number of objectives:    
- to benefit employees by highlighting their expertise and enabling them to reference their creative work in their professional portfolios and resumes,
- to visibly demonstrate the library’s commitment to open by including a Creative Commons license statement on our content,
- to remedy the general lack of awareness about copyright, both within the library and in the broader university, and
perhaps most importantly:
- to model and promote respect for copyright for the university community, recognizing its significant impact on the creation and use of works in teaching, learning, research, and many other campus activities.

Establishing and implementing these new copyright-focused practices, however, was not without challenge and controversy. This session explores the obstacles we encountered in our multi-year journey to develop practices that were acceptable to both content creators and content managers, while also respecting the boundaries of institutional IP policies and collective agreements.

Join us for a deep dive into the Canadian case law that relates to fair dealing, with a particular focus on CCH and subsequent cases. During this session, attendees will learn the importance of fair dealing, discovering how decisions from the courts can be used to help copyright users conduct six factor fair dealing assessments. This session will also include a comparative introduction to US fair use and will conclude with a brief discussion of other exceptions to copyright infringement in Canadian copyright law. This session will be of particular interest to attendees starting their work in copyright within higher education. Attendees will also receive a reading package that includes all related case law with annotated notes from the slide deck.  

The exception in the Copyright Act for persons with perceptual disabilities (section 32) recognizes fundamental human rights in the copyright regime, such as the rights to access works, to education, and to cultural participation. Libraries and other non-profit organizations work hard to ensure that accessible content can be made available to users with perceptual disabilities by producing and distributing works in the alternate formats their users need.  

However, understanding and navigating the requirements set forth by the Act is not always easy or simple and confusion about these requirements and fear of making a mistake can represent a major barrier to these organizations in fulfilling their mandate.

The presenters have put together Accessible Content: A guide to the Canadian Copyright Act on Searching for Accessible Formats and Producing and Distributing Alternate Formats to clear up this confusion and provide clear and easy to follow guidelines. This presentation will introduce the major copyright issues in accessible format production, provide some context on the creation of the guide and walk the audience through the guidelines.

Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) has been actively engaged in publishing open textbooks (primarily adapting existing works with some original works) using the Pressbooks platform for 4 years. We currently have 120 titles in our Pressbooks catalogue with more in production. Our open textbook publishing program differs from many post-secondary institutions using a guided process with the Copyright Office managing production and publishing to ensure copyright compliance and legislated accessibility requirements are built into the creation process. This collaborative guided approach has provided insight into common misconceptions held by academic creators and where most of our authors need support to create copyright compliant open textbooks.

Light refreshments available in the Atrium during this break!

Talk 1: Crown Copyright Code of Best Practices for Libraries (Amanda Wakaruk and Jennifer Zerkee)
Reproducing and sharing government publications shouldn’t cause legal chill, but we know that it does. What are your library’s legal rights and how should you navigate Crown copyright controls when embarking on digitization and web archiving projects? This session introduces a code of best practices focused on these types of stewardship activities.

Talk 2: Planning Ahead: How to Enact a Multi-Year Strategic Plan for Copyright Services from the Academic Library  (Shelby Thaysen) 
Join Shelby Thaysen as she shares practical insights on crafting a multi-year strategic plan for copyright services at a college library. Emphasizing alignment with institutional goals and a keen focus on meeting our users' evolving needs, this plan serves as a roadmap for navigating the complexities of copyright with a forward-thinking approach. This session will cover the process taken to develop the plan, a breakdown of the key components of the plan, and lessons learned along the way.

Talk 3: Nailing Jell-O to a Wall: Copyright Education at Nova Scotia Health (Roxanne MacMillan and Lana MacEachern)
In 2022, Nova Scotia Health Library Services hired a permanent Librarian Educator to develop an institution-wide copyright education program. In collaboration with a Library Technician, they conducted an environmental scan of the organization’s copyright practices and policies and identified gaps and inconsistencies. Based on their findings, they created tools and a focused training program to educate Nova Scotia Health staff on copyright best-practices.

Talk 4: Online Copyright Education Resources at Canadian Universities (Cecilia Molto)  
Access to online copyright education resources is a growing concern as more research is carried out partially or totally online. With large digital collections and the continued trend of online courses librarians at academic universities must meet their patron’s copyright education needs online.

This presentation will present data that was collected from academic library websites in December 2023. This data collection aimed to find what copyright educational resources were accessible through academic library websites at top ranking Canadian universities. Data collected included, data on the visibility of each university’s copyright dedicated webpages, data relating to the creating party of the educational resources, searches for key copyright terminology, and digital collection hit results with relevant subject headings.

The findings of the data analysis included tendencies for universities to create their own copyright education resources while also providing links to government resources and the resources of other academic libraries. Certain key terms such as copyright were explored in greater depth while terms such as moral rights were hardly covered at all.

Finally, I will propose further research on the topic that would allow for a better understanding of the state of copyright education at Canadian universities.

Includes hors d'oeuvres, cash bar (1 free drink ticket), and prize draw.
Featuring special film screenings from the Discovery Centre and a reading of "The Public Domain Ball": A Copyright Murder Mystery, an original one-act play by Marty Grande-Sherbert about the "death plus 70 years" copyright extension applied to works under the Copyright Act of Canada in 2022.
Conference registration includes 1 ticket; additional tickets for guests may also be purchased.

Enjoy a light breakfast in the atrium.

Twenty years ago, the Supreme Court declared in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2004 SCC 13, that fair dealing and other exceptions to copyright infringement are not mere loopholes in the Copyright Act, they are user rights. What is CCH’s impact and legacy on user rights two decades later? Answering these questions requires a look into the interaction between user rights and technological protection measures (“TPMs”), (non)overridability by contract, and into the latest “stress test” to user rights brought on by AI. Is fair dealing as legal framework robust enough? And for which case/situation? These are some of the questions that Pascale Chapdelaine will explore in her presentation

Note: a reading of this play will be performed at the opening reception!

"The Public Domain Ball" is my original one-act play about the "death plus 70 years" extension of copyright that was applied to works under the Copyright Act in 2022. Due to this amendment of the Act, many creative works scheduled to enter the public domain were suddenly halted for another 20 years. In this play, I use the analogy of a "murder mystery" to present an engaging educational approach to the importance of the public domain for creative innovation. The cast of characters, all in the public domain (Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland and others), come together and attempt to uncover why many newly scheduled characters aren't attending this years "Public Domain Ball."

The Editor of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning , Canada’s first recognized open access journal, will lead a workshop on open access including the difference between genuine open access and “open washing." He will describe the colours of open access (bronze, hybrid, green, gold and diamond,) and solicit comments on the benefits and challenges of each. The discussions will lead to the purpose and role of DOAJ and in Canada Érudit.  Other topics to be included for discussion in this workshop include rankings and Impact Factors; h-index, ESCI, and SCOPUS, leading to discussions on commercial publishers, predatory journals and Sci-Hub among other open access issues raised by the participants.

Light refreshments available in the atrium during this break!

Educators, researchers, artist-scholars, and librarians face a pressing need to be able to continue to access, preserve, and reuse media content. Barriers to access, preservation, and reuse are increasing as copyright owners continue to use technology to lock-down access and move the industry away from physical formats towards streaming media and licensing, and the resultant overriding of copyright exceptions.

This session highlights a pan-Canadian multi-institutional initiative to develop two best practices codes in applying fair dealing and other exceptions (user rights) in scholarly and professional practices involving copyright-protected media. The Media Access and Copyright Group (MAC) was created under the sponsorship of the Film and Media Studies Association of Canada. Comprising about 40 communication and media studies scholars, academic librarians, copyright advisors, filmmakers, and legal experts, MAC is developing two codes to help media and communication scholars and academic librarians understand when unauthorized uses of media content may be permissible for educational, research-creation, or preservation purposes.

The session will briefly outline the structure of MAC and its best practices research project, including an overview of its application for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant. This session also touches on the importance of best practices codes for fair dealing. In the Q&A, presenters will invite attendees to share their experiences in using, or advising on the use, of media content in the teaching and research environment and on the uncertainties they face in discerning copyright issues in this area.

Anthony Rosborough (Assistant Professor of Law and Computer Science at Dalhousie University) and Katherine Silins (Research Assistant and JD Candidate at the Schulich School of Law) will present on recent research into contemporary issues involving Technological Protection Measures under copyright law, including their impacts on the Right to Repair and access to digital content in libraries and archival contexts.

Enjoy a takeaway lunch while you network with other attendees.

In the United States, more libraries are calling for full ownership of electronic resources, in view of restrictive license terms offered by publishers that limit many traditional library activities.  

In the Canadian context, more favourable licensing terms may sometimes grant many of the rights that US libraries want. But is “perpetual access” enough to meet the library mission?

Lawyers for the Internet Archive will present a paper titled “Securing Digital Rights for Libraries: Towards an Affirmative Policy Agenda for a Better Internet” which articulates a set of four digital rights for libraries, based on the core library functions of preserving and providing access to information, knowledge, and culture. The session will then consider different paths for achieving these rights in the Canadian context.

Talk 1: Assessing the use of CanLit in teaching at Simon Fraser University (Jennifer Zerkee and Don Taylor)
Concerns have been raised by Canadian authors, publishers, and their collective societies regarding the use of their works in Canadian post-secondaries. In light of these concerns, we have collected and analyzed data on the use of creative and, specifically, Canadian creative literary works for teaching purposes by instructors at SFU, for the period 2018 through 2022. We are currently analyzing some comparable data from 2010 through 2012. Our definition of “creative literary works” includes novels, plays, short stories, poetry, and collections of each of these. Our goal is to understand and illustrate the prevalence of use of creative, and specifically Canadian creative, works in teaching at SFU, as well as any changes or trends over time (especially since 2012).

Types of materials for which data was analyzed includes textbooks ordered by the SFU Bookstore and course packs created by the Bookstore for purchase by students, and readings made available on reserve through SFU Library. We did not intend to assess whether and how frequently fair dealing is used versus transactional licensing where these materials were copied; instead, we simply wanted an overview of their use as teaching materials. In this presentation we will provide an overview of our methods as well as our findings, comparing the 2018-2022 findings where possible with those from 2010-2012. We hope that other institutions may undertake similar studies to contribute to a broader picture of the use of creative works in Canadian higher education.

Talk 2: Unlocking the Past: Copyright Challenges and Opportunities in Open GLAM (Roger Gillis)
In recent years, cultural heritage organizations have made significant strides in digitizing vast amounts of cultural heritage materials, paving the way for unprecedented online access. However, the complexities surrounding the usage, licensing, and ethical considerations of these digital resources remain a challenge for both institutions and users.

This presentation aims to shed light on the Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) movement, exploring its meanings, definitions, and the transformative benefits it brings to the cultural heritage landscape. Despite commendable efforts, and the many benefits that an Open GLAM approach affords, many institutions grapple with articulating and understanding copyright applications for their digital collections.

Key points of focus in this presentation will include the benefits and challenges encountered by institutions in embracing Open GLAM, real-world applications of Open GLAM principles, and considerations surrounding the Public Domain. Ethical concerns, particularly those related to indigenous cultural heritage, will be addressed as crucial aspects of the open access dialogue for cultural heritage. Overall, this presentation aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the Open GLAM movement, offering insights into its practical implications for cultural heritage organizations, the copyright community, researchers, and the broader public.

This presentation will highlight the disparity in meeting consumer expectations for broadcasting sports content. The current shift to online streaming services has resulted in accessibility and affordability challenges, leading to an increase in illegal streaming. The existing copyright laws in Canada and the US are limited to enforce the rights of sports media rights holders against primary or secondary infringement, and intermediaries face difficulties in removing infringing content. While injunctions and site-blocking orders are potential solutions, they may not effectively combat online piracy. A possible proactive solution could be a centralized streaming service offering "a la carte" pricing to address piracy while improving customer satisfaction. However, concerns about feasibility, revenue loss, and media imperialism exist. A practical solution is necessary to meet consumer preferences, benefit society, enhance current legal remedies, and reduce digital piracy.

Light refreshments available in the Atrium during this break!

This talk will begin by advocating for a view of copyright not as economic incentive or reward, but as a critical piece of a broader social policy, the goal of which is to help build a just and inclusive society. Copyright can play an important role in building such a society, in that the exclusive rights granted to creators under copyright legislation, as well as the limits placed on those rights, can be structured in ways that help advance this goal. However, copyright alone can only do so much. In seeking to build a just and inclusive society, copyright must be embedded within, and seen as part of, a broader system of supports, incentives, and social programs focused on justice and inclusion.

This talk will identify several ways in which the current Canadian copyright regime is in tension with the goal of building a just and inclusive society, and will propose reforms that would help align Canadian copyright law to this broader social policy. It will then highlight a number of supports, incentives, and programs that together with copyright can help make our society more just and inclusive. In particular, it will emphasize the important role played by libraries and librarians in seeking to build a society in which everyone has the opportunity to learn, create, and communicate in ways that are consistent with one’s own cultural and legal traditions, and in an environment that is safe and secure.