Introducing Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Digital Culture

Abstract

This book constitutes an interdisciplinary conversation about the opportunities and constraints that Canadian intellectual property laws pose for cultural activities in digital environments. Our focus is not on Canadian cultural content per se, but on the specific policy issues that arise when engaging with digital content in a Canadian context. How do the particularities of Canadian IP laws, educational and cultural institutions, media forms, creators’ collectives, geographical diversity, technologies, traditions, and audience expectations create problems or shape opportunities for more open and democratic approaches to the use of digital culture? We provide a wide range of critical perspectives on what it means and what it should mean to deal fairly in Canada. Rather than treat fair dealing as an abstract legal concept, our authors reframe it as a practice in which all participants in digital cultural exchange necessarily engage during the course of their daily activities. What the contributions to this book share is the conviction that if we want to bring Canada’s IP laws back into step with the everyday norms and practices of Canadian cultural production, then copyright reform is necessary and inevitable, if far from simple and self-evident. Accordingly, this volume provides an inclusive, interdisciplinary venue for a discussion of how everyday practices are relevant to IP reform as a matter of cultural policy.

Keywords: fair dealing, copyright, digital media, Canada