Does the educational exemption mean that schools can do whatever they want to with copyrighted materials without violating copyright law?

No. The educational exemptions in the Copyright Act very clearly set out what educational institutions can and cannot do when it comes to dealing with any of the rights protected by copyright.

For example, educational facilities are granted specific exemptions for

• reproduction for instruction, such as manually onto a dry-erase board, flip chart, or in a form suitable for displaying onto an overhead projector or similar device;
• reproduction for a test or examination;
• limited publication in a literary collection, mainly composed of non-copyright matter, of short passages from copyrighted works which are not themselves published for the use of educational institutions.

If the work is available commercially, these exemptions don't apply, except in the case of material manually copied onto a board or chart. There are other recent requirements governing the recording and use of works transmitted by telecommunications.

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