What is fair dealing and how does it relate to copyright?
Answer
Fair Dealing is a user’s right in copyright law permitting use of, 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 protected material for the purpose of:
- research
- private study
- education
- satire
- parody
- criticism
- review
- news reporting
Fair Dealing is only applicable provided that what you do with the work is ‘fair’. See Section 3: What is fair dealing? of the Copyright Matters! booklet for further explanation.
If your purpose is criticism, review or news reporting, you must also mention the source and author of the work for it to be fair dealing.