Fair Dealing in Canada: Dry Erase Boards and Overhead Projectors - Believe It Or Not? Updated

(Wikimedia)

Believe  it or not, the following was in Canada's Copyright Act until 2012:

Reproduction
for instruction
29.4 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution or a person
acting under its authority
(a) to make a manual reproduction of a work onto a dry-erase board, flip chart or other
similar surface intended for displaying handwritten material, or
(b) to make a copy of a work to be used to project an image of that copy using an overhead
projector or similar device for the purposes of education or training on the premises of an educational institution.

Thankfully, those provisions are now gone and those responsible for them are doing other things or have retired.

Mercifully, the Supreme Court of Canada was much smarter than these drafters and said that fair dealing is "always available" and must be given a "large and liberal interpretation" and we shouldn't have to look at these particular (and IMHO sometimes silly) little exceptions when the general provision in s. 29  is applicable.

I am glad we never had to test what would happen if the janitor used a wet cloth to clean chalk off a blackboard after school (I may be dating myself) or whether computer projectors would be considered a "similar device" to the long obsolete "overhead projector".

HPK

PS:
April 28, 2017

A copyright nerd from Queen's Law School has provided me with a recent picture that illustrates the ongoing presence of both the dry erase board and the overhead projector at that institution.