The rights set out in the Copyright Act are subject to certain exceptions and limitations. These exceptions may be in the nature of allowing a use in a certain context without requiring not only the consent of the rights holder, but also without requiring payment of the rights holder. In some cases, a limitation may derogate from an exclusive right such that the use can be made, but there still is a requirement of compensation.
I'll discuss a few examples to illustrate some of this.
There's a general exception that applies broadly to all the rights in the act and that's what we refer to as fair dealing. It's possible for somebody to use material in a limited way for the purposes of research or private study or news commentary or criticism. This provision was recently looked at by the Supreme Court of Canada in a case called CCH, which is a legal publisher, versus the Law Society of Upper Canada. The situation was that the law library at the Law Society was making reproductions of certain case material from the books published by law publishers for client lawyers. The court held that even though this was a commercial context, because the lawyers were doing it to derive revenues, it was nonetheless fair dealing in this context because it was done for research and private study.
Apart from this general exception, there are some very specific exceptions that have been put into place for the benefit of a number of public institutions, such as non-profit libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and persons with perceptual disabilities. In that category, for instance, a school or a teacher can perform a sound recording in the context of a class for the benefit of students. That doesn't require payment or consent of a rights holder. They can also turn on the television so that they can watch a news program, even though normally this would be considered the public performance of that program in the classroom, and there's no payment or there's no consent required.