Copyright Guide for Students

Copyright law protects the economic rights of authors and publishers by prohibiting copying of their works except in certain circumstances. Copyright protection begins when a work is created, whether written, photographed, recorded, etc., and lasts, in most cases, for 70 years from the end of the year of death of the author. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 sets out the circumstances where copying is permitted.

The most useful fair dealing exceptions for students and researchers are: 

• Private study or non-commercial research –  S. 29
• Text or data analysis - S. 29A
• Critique or review the work or Make a direct quote from a work  - S. 30
• Copy a work for the purposes of caricature, parody and pastiche - S. 30A
• Perform a play or reading for educational purposes –  S. 34
• Play a sound recording, film or broadcast for educational purposes –  S. 34 

More information on the exceptions is available from Gov.UK.

Copyright protection begins when a work is created. Once it has expired, anyone can use or copy the work. The duration of  copyright depends on several factors including the type of work, whether it is published or unpublished, whether the creator is known or unknown and whether transitional arrangements from previous copyright legislation apply. The list below is a useful guide to start from when deciding if material is still in copyright.

'Fair dealing’ is a concept allowable in UK Copyright Law . Many of the education exceptions rely on this concept of fair dealing and are often referred to as the 'fair dealing exceptions'.  Unlike The CLA ( Copyright Licensing Agency) Higher Education Licence, the amounts that can be copied are not defined. Because  there are no are no defined limits of what is fair, each individual must make a judgment and decide whether their copying is fair if they are relying on 'fair dealing' as their defence. Questions that might help you decide whether the use is fair are:

•  Is the amount copied reasonable and appropriate to the context?
•  Have I copied no more than I need to?
•  Does the copying negatively affect sales of the work?
•  Have I acknowledged the work appropriately?

Unless there is a specific reason why you cannot acknowledge the sources, there must always be sufficient acknowledgment of the copyright owner and source of the material if the use is to be considered fair.

You must always check your assignment guide and follow any advise relating to the assignment.

Content owned by someone else is often referred to as third party copyright material. When reusing third party copyright material check if there is a reuse licence associated with the material that details how you can use the copyright material. If there is then this makes things a lot easier as the licence will state how you can use the content without having to contact the copyright owner for permission.

Many sites containing images, audio, videos, etc., will let you search using filters for material that allows re-use. For example, Creative Commons (CC) licences are a common filter on many sites. For images, there are reverse image search engines such as Tin Eye and Google images   and these also include this functionality. If you have found an image on a site, labelled CC BY but you want to double check the source you can use reverse image search engines such as the ones listed above to check the  source of the image.

If it is clear that the material has not been made available by the copyright owner or there is some doubt over who posted it then you should not use it. Linking to content that you suspect is posted illegally does risk infringing copyright. Try and find an alternative source for the material.  If there is no other source and there is no alternative material, email library@aberay.ac.uk for advice

If the work is not licenced for how you wish to reuse the work then there are two copyright exceptions,  s.29 Research and private study  and s.30 Criticism, review, quotation and news reporting, that are likely to cover your use of 3rd party copyright material including copying  text, images, sound and video recordings in your course work.

The amount that can be copied using a UK Copyright exception is limited by 'fair dealing' and the copied works must be sufficiently acknowledged. The amount which may be copied is not specified in law and often people will use the limits allowed by the CLA licences as a rule of thumb as to how much can be copied. However, 'fair dealing' usage could be more or less than these limits. It is up to the person copying to decide if the use is fair. To help you decide whether the use is fair, you should consider the following questions.

1. Is the amount copied reasonable and appropriate to the context?
2.  Have I copied no more than I need to?
3.  Does the copying negatively affect sales of the work?
4.  Have I acknowledged the work appropriately?

it is important that you only copy what is required for the purpose of answering the question or illustrating the point and no more. The copyright material must always be properly acknowledged unless there is a genuine reason why this is not possible. 

Creative Commons Licences provide a simple  and clear method for licensing the reuse of a copyright-protected work. 

For copyright owners, they provide everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardised way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.

For those wishing to use 3rd party copyright material,  the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?” All the reuse information is included with the licence.

The Creative Commons web site offers a choice of predefined licences using concise symbols that can be combined in different ways to produce six different licence options. Full details of each licence are provided on their website.

A good credit will allow the reader to know the source of the 3rd party material.

For print materials, these would be similar to the information for referencing. For online materials it would be author, title, URL and licence if known. 

If using CC0 material a credit is not required but it is always thought best practice to include one where possible.

Guidance on crediting 3rd party images is available from https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/best_practices_for_attribution .

There are many sources of information including videos and images on the internet which are created under licences such Creative Commons Licenses that allow the content to be re- used and in some cases adapted for reuse. Most of the most commonly used search engines have in-built tools which allow you to filter your search results to include only free-to-use images and there are search engines which have been developed to specifically to facilitate access to material that can be reused  with limited or no restrictions.  Wikimedia Commons or the Creative Commons Search  are useful ways to to search for  content in the public domain and/or under Creative Commons licenses. Information and guidance on finding images is available on the library's Newspapers and multimedia guide.

If you are using copyright material it is important that you provide an appropriate citation. Captions or figure legends for any images or videos that you reproduce should provide information about the image and its source in accordance with your department's referencing style. You should also identify the rights-holder (e.g. "Copyright ©2024 BBC"), reiterate any copyright statements or licensing terms indicated at the source (e.g. "All rights reserved", or "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License") and   if you have obtained written permission to use the content, add this additional information e.g., "Image reproduced by kind permission from  XXXXXXXX. 

Information on best practices for crediting copyright images is available from https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/best_practices_for_attribution. Remember, even if you find an image licenced CC0  it is best practice to provide an attribution especially for your assignments.

Always read and follow the guidelines in your module handbook regarding any assignment. These guidelines will include information and advice about copyright as well as information regarding student regulations. Some things that you will definitely need to consider are:

1. Does your video contain any 3rd party copyrighted material?

Third party copyright material is material that has been created by another person. You could try to include only 3rd party copyrighted material where you know that you have you have permission to use the content in this way. There are many sources of copyright free music and images available. The Creative Commons Website contains a listing of sites that offer music published under a Creative Commons license and you can use the Creative Commons search to find images that you can use in your video.  More information is available on our multimedia pages.

If you need to include third party copyright material in your course work video it may be possible to include very small amounts of copyright material  if it is 'insubstantial' or 'incidental', or is covered by one of the fair dealing exceptions e.g. Illustration for Instruction or Criticism Review or Quotation. For fair dealing, you must use no more than is required and there must be sufficient acknowledgment. 

2. Where will the completed video be posted or shown?  On a public website such as YouTube or just internally on My Learning Space? 

If the completed video is to be posted on an external website then the risk of copyright infringement increases. In addition to  understanding and abiding by the terms of use for the website used,  you must also ensure that you either own the copyright in all the material created or that you have have written permission from the copyright owner to use their material in this way or that  the content has a reuse licence that clearly states you can use the content in this way.  

3. Will your video be filmed in a public place?

 If you are filming in a privately owned space, e.g., museum, library, shop, etc., you should obtain permission to film there.

A list of the most common Copyright misconceptions and misunderstandings is produced by the UK Copyright service.