Photocopying, downloading and scanning materials such as book chapters and journal articles are most likely to be subject to copyright restrictions. The university HE Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Licence covers photocopying and scanning of most UK publications and some US and other international publishers. Briefly it allows:
- multiple photocopies of limited extracts from copyright protected printed books, journals and magazines
- digital copies of limited extracts from copyright protected printed books, journals and magazines
Photocopies may be made by academics and students for distribution in the classroom.
Academic staff requiring digital copies should submit digitisation requests to the Digital Scanning Service team. The team will check that the material is covered by the Licence and that the university has a legitimate copy, retrieve the item from stock, digitise the chapter/article, include the appropriate copyright notice and send a link which can then be used to make the text available to students through Canvas.
Currently the terms of the CLA licence permit one chapter from a book, one article from a journal/magazine issue (or 10%, whichever is greater) to be digitised or copied in support of any one course module.
Further details can be found on the Guidance for Submitting Requests page.
When linking to electronic resources from Canvas it is important that you should only provide links and not upload publisher PDFs. Further guidance can be found at Linking to e-resources in Canvas.
Images - including photographs, diagrams and other illustrations – available in print or electronic sources are subject to copyright. Images in sources covered by the CLA Licence may be photocopied or scanned and distributed to students. They may also be included in presentations. It is important that full acknowledgement or attribution of the source is given. Any teaching material that includes scanned images and uploaded to Canvas should be reported to the Digital Scanning Service team.
Images that are freely available on the internet may still be protected by copyright and permission from the rights holder should be obtained before copying them. For teaching purposes it may be permissible to use them under the criticism or review or the illustration for instruction exceptions but they must be given full acknowledgement or attribution and care must be taken that they are not further distributed.
There are many sources of copyright cleared images available on the internet which provide images with permission for use in certain circumstances including teaching and private study, for example OpenVerse licensed images. You should always check the terms and conditions to ensure your use is legal and always fully acknowledge your source.
Further guidance can be found within the Guide to Copyright and Images.
The university has an Educational Recording Agency (ERA) Licence which allows the recording of television and radio broadcasts for non-commercial educational use. Recordings can be made from all broadcasts but access to some broadcast services (such as pay TV services) may be restricted due to their terms and conditions. All scheduled free-to-air radio and television broadcasts may be recorded for the purpose of making ERA recordings.
Content may also be accessed and downloaded from On-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, 4 on Demand, ITV Player, Demand 5 and Clic (S4C) in a similar way to personal private users. This applies also to podcasts. Users should check the terms and conditions of the service providers for detail.
Further licence details can be found online.
The recordings are to be used for the educational purposes of the university only, whether on university premises or conducting courses elsewhere. Off-air recordings should not be sold, lent or hired to anyone else or copied on their behalf. The ERA scheme stipulates that recordings can only be used on courses where students constitute full-time equivalents.
Recordings in either hard copy form or by electronic means may not be supplied to distance learning students outside the UK.
The university also subscribes to Box of Broadcasts (BoB), a service for UK universities which allows you to view and record TV or radio programmes from over 60 channels.
Care should be taken when using clips from YouTube as some of the content may have been uploaded to the site illegally.
For the purposes of illustration for instruction live streaming or playing a DVD directly in class is permitted. Uploading entire film DVDs to Canvas is not permitted. However the use of a clip for the purposes of illustration for instruction would be permitted as long as the copying is fair, for non-commercial purposes and sufficiently acknowledged. Access should be restricted to those students enrolled on the module the clip is required for.
Short extracts of commercial music may be used in teaching materials for the purposes of illustration for instruction or for criticism and review in the classroom but you would need the permission of the rights holder to include it in materials on Canvas.
There are many aspects that need to be considered when recording lectures. The JISC guide Recording lectures: legal considerations – offers clear guidance including copyright issues that may arise when recording lectures.
