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By familiarising yourself with the rules, you can protect yourself and your current or future employer from committing a breach of copyright. You can also identify which resources can be used freely and to what extent.
To get to grips with the main points of the law, see Copyright Basics and other sections below for more focused guidance on particular topics.
In certain circumstances, some works may be used if that use is considered to be ‘fair dealing’. There is no strict definition of what this means but it has been interpreted by the courts on a number of occasions by looking at the economic impact of the use on the rights holder. Where the economic impact is not significant, the use may count as fair dealing.
It covers the following types of work:
Copyright does not protect ideas, thoughts or facts.
Copyright generally exists for a period of 70 years following the death of the work’s author. If the work has several authors, the period of protection will last for 70 years following the death of the last surviving author. Duration of copyright varies depending on the type of work.
For the UK, the following copyright terms apply:
In certain circumstances, some works may be used if that use is considered to be ‘fair dealing’. There is no strict definition of what this means but it has been interpreted by the courts on a number of occasions by looking at the economic impact of the use on the rights holder. Where the economic impact is not significant, the use may count as fair dealing.
The University holds the Photocopying and Scanning HE Licence from the CLA (Copyright Licencing Agency). This enables the Library to digitise print copies of journal articles, book chapters or images. Note only certain countries are covered and some individual works and publishers have been excluded from this mandate.
The licence permits copying extracts from books and journals, with a maximum of one article from a journal, or 10% or one chapter from a book – whichever is greater. All copies must be created and supplied by library staff.
This licence enables licensed ERA recordings to be accessed by students and teachers online, whether on campus or elsewhere in the UK. The BBC and Channel 4 have made changes to the terms and conditions applicable to their online services. These allow establishments holding a current ERA or ERA+ licence to record and access BBC content in relevant BBC online services for educational use, under the terms of the ERA licence. 4oD content on Channel 4’s online services can also be used for non-commercial educational purposes within the scope of the ERA licence.
Creative Commons licences allow the author of works to maintain creative control over their work even when they are happy for others to use it. There are various levels of openness that can be applied to a work, some licences allow users to copy, remix, distribute, display or perform the work, and others are more restrictive and may only be shared under the same license. The chart below shows various rules that can be applied to a work.
This means that copyright in the work is not infringed by an individual teacher or a student as long as they are copying the work to give or receive instruction (or when preparing to give or receive instruction), and the copying is used to illustrate a point about the subject being taught. This includes material for examination purposes. The exception covers all works, including images, music and video as well as text-based material.
The exception only applies if the copying is for non-commercial purposes, is properly attributed/acknowledged and the use is fair (see fair dealing). This exception mostly covers the use of images and text within a lecture or examination environment – for the copying and sharing of book chapters and journal articles, please see the section on the CLA licence above.
Researchers and students are allowed to copy limited extracts of works for their own non-commercial research and private study. This includes text, images, sound and video recordings. The amount is limited by fair dealing.
Accessible copies of a copyright work can be made for a disabled person if it is for private use and the work being copied is inaccessible to them without adaptation, or an adapted version is not available to them at a reasonable cost.
This fair dealing exception permits the use of a work for the purpose of criticism and review provided that the work has been made available to the public. In order for the exception to apply the copying of the work must be truly connected with review and criticism and not purely for illustrative or enhancement purposes.
A provision allowing use of quotations from copyright works for illustrative purposes is integrated into the existing criticism and review exception. This makes it easier to use extracts from copyright works in teaching and learning.
This new fair dealing exception has been introduced to allow use of copyright work for the purposes of caricature, parody and pastiche. Students and academics might find uses for this, for example, in creating and publishing user-generated content in some disciplines.
You can use images for limited educational purposes as part of the University’s CLA licence, and by using the relevant exceptions.
If you have found an image and want to share it publically or use it commercially then you need to get permission from the copyright owner, or fully understand any licence.
Copyright covers images found on social networks, Google Images, image databases such as Wikimedia Commons, websites, as well as those appearing in print.
Taking a photograph of a copyrighted image does not grant you the right to use it.
Take care not to infringe anyone’s privacy by using their image. Check whether any people depicted (especially children) are unidentifiable, or that they have granted permission for their image to be used.
Images are classed as “artistic works” under copyright law. Therefore, copyright lasts for 70 years after the creator of the work dies.
Films are copyright of the main creators (director, screenwriter, or composer). The film soundtrack will have different rights owners.
You may be able to copy material from Films or TV broadcasts for limited educational use using the University’s ERA licence.
You are only permitted to show films or TV broadcasts to groups of people if no payment is charged.
Be cautious of material you find on YouTube, Google Videos and similar sites, especially material posted by someone other than the copyright owner.
Copyright lasts for 70 years after the last principal director, screenwriter, or composer dies.
Sound recordings are copyright material, including that included in films and broadcast programmes.
You must not copy them unless:
A single musical, broadcast or film recording may involve multiple rights owners: there will be rights in the music, any lyrics, the performance, and the recording.
Downloading music files from the internet without permission is illegal. Your use of University IT facilities may be withdrawn if you use them to infringe copyright by making, storing or transmitting illegal copies of music or other files.
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If you have any questions please email copyright@uwtsd.ac.uk