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Using copyrighted content in Teaching and Learning

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There is sometimes a misconception that copyright protections do not apply in educational contexts. While there are some exceptions, copyright law affects re-use of third party owned material, even when used for teaching and learning purposes. 

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights that enable creators to restrict the use of their work by others, who generally need to get permission (e.g. by buying a licence). These protections are applied automatically upon content creation and, even though some people choose to mark their work with the © symbol, it doesn’t have to be explicitly indicated. That means that you should operate under the assumption that any piece of content that you find, whether online or offline, is fully protected by copyright unless otherwise indicated. It is your responsibility to ensure you are not infringing copyright when using someone’s else content. 

In certain circumstances it is possible to use copyright protected works without having to seek permission from rights holders and in 2014 the UK Government updated the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) to introduce a number of exceptions associated with the notion of ‘fair dealing’, which should not be confused with ‘Fair use’, which is a more permissive doctrine included in the United States law. Exceptions particularly relevant to teaching and learning include: 

  • Section 29 – Research and Private Study: Fair dealing with a work for the purposes of research for a non-commercial purpose does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement. 
  • Section 30 – Criticism, review, quotation and news reporting: Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement (unless this would be impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise) and provided that the work has been made available to the public. Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of reporting current events is allowed for any type of copyright work, other than a photograph. In all cases, sufficient acknowledgement will be required 
  • Section 30A – Caricature, parody or pastiche: This exception only permits use of copyrighted material for the purposes of caricature, parody, or pastiche to the extent that it is fair dealing. This must not be derogatory or cause commercial harm to the original and has to be accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement. 
  • Section 32: Illustration for Instruction: Fair dealing with a work for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction does not infringe copyright in the work provided that the dealing is for a non-commercial purpose, by a person giving or receiving instruction (or preparing for giving or receiving instruction), and accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement (unless this would be impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise). It includes setting examination questions, communicating the questions to pupils and answering the questions. 

However, you should bear in mind that UK Copyright Law establishes that some exceptions can only be applied where a relevant educational licensing scheme is not available. As a general point, in assessing whether your use of the work is permitted, you must consider if there is any financial impact on the copyright owner because of your use. Where there is no such an impact, the use may be more acceptable. 

Key considerations

Below you can see a number on key considerations to take into account when using copyright protected content in your teaching: 

  1. Whenever possible, use open content. You can see further details in this other article on the Teaching Knowledge Base: Use open content to build learning resources quickly 
  1. At times, material normally accessible through subscription may appear to be available from other websites. Sometimes, this is legitimate (for example, through institutional repositories and permitted subject repositories, such as PubMed). However, at other times, it is in breach of copyright law: for example, articles located through ResearchGate and Academia.edu are sometimes made available without the copyright owners’ permission. We recommend not linking to ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and unofficial channels in YouTube. 
  1. One can broadly assume that material hosted on an organisation’s official channel is available legally and consequently, we can link and embed it on Aula. More care will be necessary in the following scenarios: 
    1. Linking to private posts that may be in copyright infringement 
    2. Uploading the material outright, rather than linking 
  1. Remember that not all material on the Internet is free and available lawfully without restrictions. Additionally, not all websites have policies on permissions and sharing legally. If in doubt it is best to err on the side of caution. 
  1. It is always good practice to include full references to any third party owned material for students, so that they can find the original source. Proactively ensuring that correct acknowledgement is given to other people’s work sets a good example to students that they can then replicate in their own approach. 
  1. You may paraphrase text when appropriate, but remember to reference it correctly, using Coventry University Referencing Guidelines. Include official links to external referenced resources, such as to official articles landing pages or officially uploaded material.  
  1. You need to credit or full reference data that you have not collected yourself, or graphs and figures created by others. 
  1. Do not remove credits and make edits from something you reuse without explicit permission from the copyright holder. 
  1. The inclusion of downloaded and scanned materials such as book chapters and journal articles are most likely to be subject to copyright restrictions. The university has the CLA Licence that covers most UK publications and some US and other international publishers. The CLA Licence allows for copying and distributing limited amounts of material without having to request permission every time. Contact your Subject Librarian for more information on whether your re-use of material is covered under the licence. 
  1. Material made available through BoB, British Standards and Digimap is only available to students within the UK territory –students connecting from abroad will be unable to gain access. Some platforms such as YouTube have geographical restrictions and some countries have their access banned. 

Authors

  • Daniel Villar-Onrubia

    Daniel works as Innovation Lead at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab. His areas of expertise include digital fluency, networked learning, open knowledge and internationalisation of HE.

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  • Erica Wine

    I work at Coventry University Online as a Digital Repository and Copyright Lead. I strongly believe in the importance of knowledge and sharing of information as they empower people to unlocking their potential for discovery and advancement of humanity.

    View all posts
Updated on December 9, 2020
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