Daily Bulletin, Tuesday, July 12, 1994

COPYRIGHT ADVICE:  Staff, faculty and students will soon be getting clear 
answers about what they can photocopy and what they can't.  A memo and a 
question-and-answer sheet about copyright will be issued this fall, the 
result of a contract signed in late May between the university and a 
"reproduction rights organization" called CanCopy.  

The contract is a licence that gives UW and its faculty, students and staff 
members the right to do some copying of things that would otherwise be 
forbidden by copyright restrictions.  It protects the university (and 
individual students, staff and faculty) from being sued for copyright 
infringement as long as they're working within the terms of the licence. In 
return, UW will pay about $42,000 a year to CanCopy, plus 3.5 cents for each 
page of material that's copied for sale to students or others.

CanCopy, officially the Canadian Reprography Collective, represents most 
Canadian publishers, and has reciprocal agreements with collectives in many 
other countries, including the United States.

UW and Wilfrid Laurier University were the first two Canadian universities 
to reach agreements with CanCopy, based on a "model licence" negotiated by 
the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.  In general, the 
agreement allows UW "the non-exclusive right to make Copies of Published 
Works for use by Students, Professors and administrative staff of the 
Licensee and for use in interlibrary loan".

But there are limits. For example, the licence covers no more than 10 per 
cent of a published work such as a book, or an entire single short story, 
poem, newspaper article or encyclopaedia article. "The Institution shall 
only make a sufficient number of Copies to provide one for each Student, 
two for each Professor and such number required by the Institution for 
administrative purposes."

There is a long list of publishers whose works are excluded, and there are 
several other exclusions -- government publications, unpublished works, 
workbooks and other publications designed to be used and thrown away, print 
music, magazine advertisements.

If people at UW want to make copies of things not covered by the CanCopy 
agreement, they will still need individual permission from the copyright 
owner, unless their copying can be protected by the legally vague concept 
of "fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, 
review or newspaper summary".

Dr. Robin Banks, associate provost (academic affairs), says a one-page 
letter will go across campus this fall, telling people why UW has signed the 
licence with CanCopy, "and what difference it's going to make in their lives".
There will also be a more detailed question-and-answer document about 
copyright, he said.  In the meantime, Banks said, "people don't have to 
worry. CanCopy recognizes that it takes a while to get things organized!"

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS today to Joy Roberts of alumni affairs, and (a day early)
to Kathy Attridge of the registrar's office.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
888-4567 ext. 3004      credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca