Canada clarifies copyright and fair dealing defences

The Supreme Court of Canada has been prolific on copyright issues in recent times – with mixed results for rights-holders and for content users.

Of particular interest is the Court's approach to the fair dealing defences and to technological issues surrounding the use of musical works.

Fair dealing

Commercial music selling websites will often permit users to preview a snippet of a musical work in order to decide whether to purchase it. The question before the Court was whether this was covered by the "fair dealing" defence allowing people to use a copyright work for research or private study.

The Court set a low threshold and concluded that the use of previews by a consumer for the non-creative purpose of investigating and identifying works for purchase could constitute research.