This guide provides copyright information and links, but not legal opinion, which is relevant to teaching staff in the University community. For copyright matters not covered in this Guide, including copyright surveys, licenses and breaches of copyright, contact the University Copyright Officer. Help is also available from the organisations listed in the External Copyright Contacts box on the left.
Thankyou to the University of Canberra Library for allowing use of their copyright information for learning and teaching material.
Copyright is the right to make, keep, adapt and distribute/communicate copies of someone's work.
Copyright covers original literary, artistic, dramatic and musical works, and recordings:
It covers the "physical" (or electronic) manifestation of ideas, not ideas and information itself.
| Copyrightable | Not copyrightable |
|---|---|
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Manifestations of ideas such as:
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(NB: These may be covered by other forms of IP protection, such as trademarks or patents)
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In order to use third-party material that is covered by copyright, you need permission from the copyright holder (a licence).
Licences can be provided in advance (e.g., Creative Commons, Unsplash). You must follow the conditions of these licences to be covered by them, otherwise you will need to contact the copyright holder to ask for permission to use their work in a way that is not covered by that licence.
In Australian law, "Fair Dealing" and other exceptions allow some use of certain amounts of third party material without asking for permission - but your use must be covered by the exceptions.
Examples of works covered by copyright include:
| Literary works | Artistic works | Dramatic works | Musical works |
|---|---|---|---|
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Including, but not limited to:
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Including, but not limited to:
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Including, but not limited to:
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Including, but not limited to:
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Examples of "subject matter other than works" that are covered by copyright:
For more information, see this resource by the Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition:
We acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants of the nation and acknowledge Traditional Owners of the lands where our staff and students, live, learn and work.
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License. Content from this Guide should be attributed to James Cook University Library. This does not apply to images, third party material (seek permission from the original owner) or any logos or insignia belonging to JCU or other bodies, which remain All Rights Reserved.