Fair Dealing for Private Use and Criticism

In one line

Three purposes let you deal with somebody else's work without asking: keeping it for yourself or your research, criticising or reviewing it, and reporting the news.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957 provides that a fair dealing with any work, not being a computer programme, for the purpose of private or personal use including research, criticism or review whether of that work or of any other work, or the reporting of current events and current affairs including the reporting of a lecture delivered in public, shall not constitute an infringement of copyright.

Why the law has this at all

Because a person must be able to use what he has bought. Reading, noting, quoting and studying are the ordinary uses of a book, and none of them should require a licence.

Because criticism cannot be done at a distance. A reviewer who may not quote cannot review, and an author who could stop quotation could stop criticism.

And because news is time-sensitive. A broadcaster reporting a speech, a match or a disaster cannot stop to negotiate.

The provision itself

Section 52(1)(a). "A fair dealing with any work, not being a computer programme, for the purpose of

(i) private or personal use, including research;

(ii) criticism or review, whether of that work or of any other work;

(iii) the reporting of current events and current affairs, including the reporting of a lecture delivered in public".

The Explanation. "The storing of any work in any electronic medium for the purposes mentioned in this clause, including the incidental storage of any computer programme which is not itself an infringing copy for the said purposes, shall not constitute infringement of copyright."

What the 2012 amendment did to this clause

It widened the first purpose. The clause used to read "private use, including research". It now reads "private or personal use, including research", so a use that is personal without being private is within it.

It merged the old clause (b) into it. Before 2012, reporting of current events was a separate clause (b). It is now (a)(iii), and clause (b) is the transient and incidental storage exception.

It added "and current affairs". Reporting of current events "and current affairs" is wider than events alone, and covers analysis and comment on continuing matters.

It added the Explanation. Electronic storage for these purposes, and the incidental storage of a computer programme that is not itself an infringing copy, are outside infringement.

And it excluded computer programmes from the clause. "Not being a computer programme". Programmes have their own exceptions in clauses (aa) to (ad).

The three purposes, worked out

Private or personal use, including research. The dealing must be by the person for himself. Copying for a class, for customers or for the public is not private or personal use, however small the class. Research includes academic and private research; the clause does not distinguish commercial from non-commercial research, which the equivalent English provision does.