The Ontario Public School Board Association last week advised school boards across the province that they should prepare to stop using the Access Copyright licence effective next year. The advisory indicates that the Counsel of Ministers of Education, Copyright, which represents education ministers across the country, has received a legal opinion that confirms that K-12 schools no longer require the Access Copyright licence since they can rely on fair dealing for the small percentage of copying in schools that is unlicensed or copied without permission. A 2005 study of copying in Canadian K-12 schools conducted for Access Copyright found that 88% of copying of copyright works already had the necessary permissions without the need for an additional licence. The Access Copyright portion covered as little as 6% of the total copying and given the recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions, the schools believe that this copying is covered by fair dealing.

The advisory to the school boards includes the following (the fair dealing guidelines, which are very similar to the fair dealing policy adopted by the ACCC, can be found here):

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