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9 Rev. Econ. Rsch. on Copyright Issues 3 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/rvwoecrh9 and id is 1 raw text is: 












      Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2012, vol. 9(1), pp. 3-46




      THE ECONOMICS FAIR USE/DEALING: COPYRIGHT
          PROTECTION IN A FAIR AND EFFICIENT WAY


                                MARCEL   BOYER


        ABSTRACT. The  Canadian  Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42) in-

        cludes several exceptions to the exclusive right of copyright holders.

        Among  the most important are the provisions concerning fair dealing,

        which state that the use of a copyright protected literary or artistic work

        for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, or news

        reporting does not constitute a violation of copyright. Our objective

        in this paper is to characterize the role and nature of this exception

        from the standpoint of contemporary economic theory and analysis and

        in the light of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on this

        subject (CCH  Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004]

        1 S.C.R. 339, 2004 SCC  13). We propose in the conclusion a market

        based approach to maximize the dissemination of works while avoiding

        unnecessary recourse to the fair dealing exception.






                               1. INTRODUCTION


   The  Canadian   Copyright  Act  (R.S.C., 1985,  c. C-42) includes  several ex-

ceptions  to the exclusive right of copyright holders, including  the provisions

concerning   fair dealing in sections 29, 29.1 and 29.2. Those   sections state

that fair dealing in respect  of a literary or artistic work for the purposes  of


This article is based in part on my expert testimony before the Copyright Board of Canada in
the hearing Access Copyright Elementary and Secondary School Tariff 2005-2009. As such, it
is written with a large, informed if non-specialist, legal and economic audience in mind. I am
grateful to an anonymous referee for excellent comments as well as to Claude Brunet, David
Collier and Louis Gratton (lawyers at Ogilvy Renault, now Norton Rose), Roanie Levy (Access
Copyright), Paul Audley (Paul Audley and Associates), and Nicolas Marchetti (CIRANO) for
their help, encouragement and comments on previous versions of this paper. Needless to say, I
remain solely responsible for the content of this paper and of any of its shortcomings.
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