Learn about your responsibilities -- and alternatives
Students
We know that textbooks can be prohibitively expensive. However, sharing pdfs of books, even if you're not making money from it, violates Canadian copyright law and SFU's policies.
Sharing copied books in Facebook groups or similar venues can result in legal action against the students involved and the University.
The new Fact Sheet on Sharing of Textbook pdfs outlines reasons why students should not participate in these groups, and provides links to resources for assistance if textbooks are unaffordable.
The SFU Copyright Office can answer any questions about this issue, or about copyright in general.
Instructors
The Library can help you to reduce the cost of textbooks for your students.
You can suggest that the Library purchase the materials your students will need, and place library copies of readings on reserve.
Or consider adapting an Open Educational Resource (OER) or creating your own with a grant and project support from the Library.
Note: The information obtained from or through this website is provided as guidelines for using works for educational purposes and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Contact copy@sfu.ca with any questions. The Copyright Officer is not a lawyer or legal expert in copyright law and is able to provide a professional and not a legal opinion. A professional opinion is offered for information purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice.
This work, the Simon Fraser University Copyright website, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise noted.