Finding the Copyright balance: originality, authorisation and fair dealing in Canadian and New Zealand law

Abstract

Copyright law is based on a balance between the need to provide incentives and rewards to authors on the one hand, and the need to ensure new creators have adequate access to existing works on the other. Recent years have seen a trend in copyright law toward extending rights for rights holders at the expense of users and the public domain. This trend has continued despite extensive critique from commentators internationally. At a normative level, debate continues over how copyright provisions should be interpreted in order to preserve the copyright balance, and in order to facilitate access to copyright works, particularly access for new creators.