By Candace Westby, TM Examiner
A copyright owner is the ONLY per-son who can adapt their work; make copies and distribute them; perform, broadcast or play the work in public; put it on the inter-net; or lend copies. It’s illegal for anyone else to do these things without the copyright owner’s per-mission.
But like other copyright laws around the world, Cayman’s Copy-right Law lists exceptions to these rules. Known as ‘fair dealing’, the exceptions allow the use of copy-right-protected works without the permission of the rights holder, for specific purposes.
In the Cayman law, some excep-tions are:
• Personal copying for private use
• Non-commercial research and private study
• Text and data mining for non-commercial research
• Criticising, reviewing and re-porting current events
• Educational use by schools, uni-versities or other educational estab-lishments
• Helping disabled people by making a braille copy
• Time shifting, by recording TV to privately view later
• Use for parody, caricature and pastiche
• Use by libraries, archives and public administrations
• Making backup copies, decompi-lation, observing, testing and study-ing, and correcting computer pro-gramme errors
• Any acts necessary to access the contents of a database
• Using a design to make a product
• Creating backup copies of eBooks when originals are no longer usable
• Making notes or recordings for purpose of recording current events
• Publicly reciting a reasonable ex-tract from a published literary or dramatic work
• Using abstracts of scientific and technical articles
• When it’s difficult to identify au-thors or to ascertain if the copyright has expired.
To help determine if your use of cop-yright-protected works without permission consti-tutes fair dealing, ask yourself:
• Is the amount copied reasonable and appropriate, or does the copied portion con-stitute a significant part of the work? Was it necessary to copy that amount?
For example, if the conclusion of the work is one page, it may not be con-sidered fair for you to copy that en-tire page. This would be based upon the amount and substantiality of the portion taken.
• What is the nature or purpose for copying the work?
Are you in college, or reporting cur-rent events? If your reason for copying does not fall under the previous-ly listed exceptions, you may be guilty of infringement.
• Does copying this work deprive the copyright owner of income?
If your use of the work ends up caus-ing the owner to lose revenue, this would not be considered fair.
While these factors will vary from case to case, it’s worth considering them when planning to use copy-right-protected works without the owner’s permission. So keep these things in mind as you get creating, Cay-man!
CIIPO is a unit under General Registry
To learn more about intellectual property, visit www.ciipo.gov.ky or email : info@ciipo.gov.ky
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