A student's guide to copyright

During the course of your studies, you may sometimes want to copy material, e.g. journal articles, web pages, maps etc. You need to be aware that this material will almost certainly be protected by copyright, which will limit the amount you can copy.

Making a single copy for private study or research for a non-commercial purpose

Fair dealing is a way in which copyright materials may be copied without the prior consent of the rights holder(s). It applies where you copy part of a copyright work for your own, or for another individual’s private study or research for a non-commercial purpose. This copying may be done by using a photocopier or a scanner or other means of copying, e.g. mobile ‘phone. You should keep such copying within the following limits.

• A single extract or several extracts from a book as long as the total copied is not more than 5% of the whole work, OR
• one chapter from a book, OR
• one article from a journal or newspaper issue, OR
• one paper from a set of conference proceedings, OR
• one single case from a volume of law reports, OR
• Poems, short stories and other short literary works may be copied so long as they are not more than ten pages long.    

• You may photocopy up to 10% of a British Standard for private study or research for a non-commercial purpose.
• You may select an area of a map not greater than A4 in size and copy it up to four times for private study or research for a non-commercial purpose. 
  
  CAUTION: Although you may make your single copy by using a scanner or other means of electronic copying, you must not re-publish or distribute the material in any way, e.g. by adding it to a web page, or make multiple copies of the item. 
  
• Course Packs or other photocopied material distributed by your lecturers should not be further photocopied as this could be a serious breach of the University’s copyright licences.
• Sound recordings, e.g. music CDs; films and broadcasts are not covered by fair dealing for private study or research and so may not be copied in this way. 

• Unless otherwise stated, ALL material on the internet is protected by copyright.
• If you wish to copy material from the web, i.e. to print or download it, you should check to see whether the page indicates what you can and cannot do.
• If no guidance is provided, then you may make ONE copy (on disk or on paper) of the material you need for your own private study or research for a non-commercial purpose. The limits as to how much you may copy are set out above.
• You must not download music from the web, unless the web page permits it; nor must you take part in file sharing with others. Both of these are very serious breaches of copyright and can have grave consequences for you and for the University.
• If you are creating your own web page then make sure you start from scratch. Taking and adapting someone else’s web pages is a clear breach of copyright law. When you add hypertext links to your page, check that you always link to the front or home page of the web site. If you wish to make “deep links”, i.e. to link direct to a page beyond the home page, you should first obtain written permission from the copyright holder. Use text links rather than logos/graphics unless you have first obtained written permission to use these as links. Do not use frames or other display mechanisms which may give the impression that someone else’s website is your own work.
• You might want to protect your own work on the web - you can attempt to do this by adding a simple copyright statement, e.g. Copyright [your name] 2004. If the material is really important to you, it might be wiser not to put it on the web.

Most of these products are covered by licence agreements which may set copying limits. Sometimes these are shown on screen, but not always. In practice, it will usually be all right to download or print the results of a search. Contact Information Services if you need any further guidance.

• The University has a licence which covers the production of slides, e.g. from books. You should contact the staff of the Slide Library for advice on how to do this.
• You may make a SINGLE copy of a photograph for use in your work (but see Dissertations, theses etc. below).
• If you wish to take your own photographs of an artist’s works, you should check with the gallery to see whether this is permitted. Sometimes, you may have to contact the artist directly for permission.

If you are studying the making of film or film sound-tracks, then you can copy material available on published sound and video recordings to make your own film or film sound-track, provided that this is in the course of your studies. Note, this copying may only be done by a tutor or a student involved in such a course.

You may make OHP transparencies for assessed presentations. You should acknowledge the source on the transparency.

The law allows you to include photocopied material in your assessed work, even if you need to provide more than one copy of your work for your tutors. You must, however, always include appropriate acknowledgement.

If you are contemplating making your work available to the public, e.g. by publication, display, exhibition etc., you must be aware that the legal permission to copy for assessed work does not extend to this. You must therefore obtain written permission from the copyright owner before you make the work available to the public.