Supplementary Scenario - Digital Copies and Copyright

INTRO MUSIC


HOST
Welcome to this podcast exploring Canadian copyright law and User Rights. 
In this podcast we will take you through a fictional scenario that illustrates how copyright and Creative Commons licensing influence K-12 educators in their use of educational resources in their teaching. 
Please note that the scenario in the podcast is best understood if listeners know  the definitions of Canadian copyright and Fair Dealing.   
We spoke with Jim Swanson, a Calgary lawyer who specializes in Intellectual Property and copyright law to address the issues highlighted in this scenario.
Please note that although the following material covers Canadian copyright law, it is not to be taken as legal advice. Copyright law is constantly evolving and Jim’s remarks may not be applicable in all cases. 
In this scenario, a teacher is given a new assignment of social studies 7. However, there are no textbooks for the social studies 7 class. The teacher from the year before bought the online version of the textbook in pdf.  
We asked Jim if the new teacher has the right to share digital copies of the textbook with their class and what the implications would be in terms of copyright. 


JIM SWANSON
My answer to that would be: it’s going to depend on the circumstances of the purchase of the .pdf documents in question. At the time of purchase I would assume there was some kind of click-through agreement in all likelihood. So you would have to go back and see what that says. It’s possible that the .pdfs are just licensed in some fashion, keeping in mind that a license is just permission to do something that otherwise would be illegal  that you could be sued for, and if the. pdfs are licensed what are the terms of that license? You would have to read it and see what it says. On the other hand, the question you could ask: are the .pdfs basically similar to books? So if you buy a book, a tangible book, you can sell it or give it away, you burn it, you can throw it in the garbage. You can pretty much do anything you want with it except  you can’t copy it.  Because you don’t own the copyrights. You only own that tangible representation of the copyrights. So in this scenario,  if that’s the situation you might be able to use the same number of .pdfs that were originally actually  purchased but you would have to pay for further copies if you needed further copies. You probably would not be able to just make them. Again, you’re going to have to go back and look at the license that was in place at the time the .pdfs were purchased.


HOST
As we can see from Jim’s response, it is important for teachers to fully understand the need to read the fine print and fully understand the different kinds of licenses that may be in place when it comes to copyright and digital materials. 
We hope you have enjoyed listening to this podcast and will take some time to explore other podcasts in this series, including additional scenarios featuring K-12 teachers and how their creation and use of educational resources may be influenced by Canadian Copyright Law.
Special thanks to Jim Swanson for being a part of this podcast series.    
This resource was funded by the Alberta Open Educational Resources (ABOER) Initiative, which is made possible through an investment from the Alberta government.
In keeping with principals of Open Education, this podcast is available under an open license, CC-by-SA.
The music "AM-Trans" and "Cash Rules" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share-alike 4.0 International license.



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