Copyright for Teaching Staff

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:

• Literary = most written forms (e.g. letters, journal articles, slide shows, computer programs)
• Artistic = other tangible creative forms (e.g. drawings, sculpture, photographs, plans)
• Dramatic = works intended to be performed by words or actions (e.g. plays, screenplays, dance, mime, song lyrics)
• Musical = works intended to be performed, exclusive of words and actions (e.g. sheet music, melodies, orchestral scores)
• Matter other than works = published editions (e.g, an edition of a book, or an arrangement of sheet music), recordings (e.g. music recordings, film recordings) and broadcasts.

 It covers the "physical" (or electronic) manifestation of ideas, not ideas and information itself.

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:

Examples of "subject matter other than works" that are covered by copyright:

• Sound recordings (music recordings, podcasts, recorded lectures)
• Films (feature films, documentaries, vodcasts, home movies)
• Broadcasts (i.e., television or radio broadcasts - not streaming media or video-on-demand, these are covered by recordings, not broadcasts)
• Published editions of works (i.e., the actual edition of a book/play/sheet music/etc, including the formatting and typographical arrangement)

For more information, see this resource by the Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition: