cc|ca SCENARIOS

Scenarios

CANADIAN COPYRIGHT LAW FOR CREATORS

Prepared by Marty Finestone (CC Canada Alumni '05)

Ok, I'm hip to what a Creative Commons licence is but how does copyright work for me as a creator? To help you understand the role of copyright law in your creative enterprise, we've prepared the following scenarios. Each scenario begins with a creative work and outlines the legal issues that apply.

You should have a basic understanding of copyright before reading them (learn Canadian copyright law in minutes here).

1: Creating fan fiction based on a pop-culture work

2: A local lifestyle magazine hires a freelance photographer to take pictures of the opening of a new restaurant

3: A photographer takes a picture – how long do s/he have copyright protection in that picture?

4: A band writes and records an album’s worth of songs, signs to a label, re-records the material and puts one song out as a single. The single gets played on the radio and we hear it in a restaurant.

5: I perform a cover version of another band's song and record it onto CD

6: Printing off articles from a news website

7: A teacher photocopies an encyclopedia article and distributes it to the students in their class

8: A school or summer camp performs a Broadway play

9: I want to adapt a novel by Jane Austen into a movie. Can I do that?

10: I invent a board game, is it protected by copyright?

11: I write a cookbook, are my recipes protected by copyright?