Copyright and you

Most materials that you use in the course of your study (e.g. books, journal articles, online resources, images, music) are protected by copyright law. In the UK the legal framework, including what is protected and for how long, is laid out in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Copyright law determines both whether and how much you can photocopy, scan, print or download and how much you can reuse in your assignments. It is therefore important to be aware of what you can and cannot do when it comes to using copyrighted materials, to ensure that you remain within the law. Anyone who infringes copyright by copying a protected work without the permission of the copyright owner can be sued for damages.

Copyright law applies both to materials you access via the Library / your course pack and sources you access independently on the web. In most cases, materials that you can download on the web for free cannot be copied or re-used without permission.

Works protected by copyright include texts (e.g. journal articles, books, screenplays, blog posts, newspaper articles), music, sound recordings, images, films, databases, computer programs, websites, designs, maps – basically any type of original creative work.

Copyright law also protects your rights over your own work. As a default, you own the copyright for any work you produce as a student (essays, presentations, projects and dissertations). Exceptions where copyright is assigned to someone else might include projects done jointly with others or sponsored by an external organisation.

As a registered student at the University, you have access to:

• Course materials provided by your lecturer on your reading list. These are normally available to you under one of the University’s copyright licences. This means that these materials are only available to students registered on a particular course and are intended for your own personal study only. Do not recopy or share any of these materials with others
• Materials available via the Library. These include hard copies and electronic copies of journal articles, books, book chapters, newspaper articles, reports, TV and radio broadcasts, music and other materials, as well as access to electronic databases. You may have come across some of these resources via an Internet search, but they are available to you only because the Library subscribes to them and provides them to you under a specific licence.

To access and use licensed materials in your own studies you need to be an authorised user at the University (i.e. a registered student with authorised access to Library resources). There are, however, still limits to how much you can copy, and you should never share copies with others. In particular, you can:

• Access these materials for your own personal non-commercial research and study purposes
• Make one copy (e.g. print, photocopy, scan, save on a memory stick) from a resource, i.e. one chapter from a book, one article from a journal issue, one short story or poem, one case from a law report, for your own personal use.

You may not:

• Share these materials with others: emailing copies to others or posting online (even in secure intranets like SurreyLearn) is not normally allowed. However, you can share a link to the published work so that others can access it directly if they have permission
• Keep multiple copies, for example a print and an electronic version or multiple electronic versions in different places
• Download large quantities of materials systematically or using automated software (for example, downloading lots of material at once on EndNote). Publishers will identify these practices and may terminate access/disable your IT account
• Alter the work in any way. You may not make any changes to the material or remove/change any copyright notices attached to it.

Materials found on the web—texts, images, video, blog content etc—are usually protected by copyright, even if you can access them freely. This means that you will need permission to copy or reuse them, unless:

• There is an explicit copyright notice or licence (usually found at the end of a site’s homepage) allowing you to re-use the material
• You can justify using small amounts under fair dealing - see Copying without permission: fair dealing section below.

There is a great deal of material on the web which has been posted illegally. You should check that the item to which you wish to link has been put there by the copyright holder or with the holder’s permission. If you link to works which infringe someone’s copyright, like pirated music files or video clips of films or TV programmes on YouTube, you might be liable for what is known as contributory copyright infringement. An alternative is to cite the original media without the use of any link.

See also the section on Copyright for images, film and music.

Images, music and multimedia are subject to copyright. The fact that these materials are available for downloading, for example on Google images or on YouTube, does not mean they are free to re-use. Normally you will need to get permission to re-use these materials, unless one or more of the following applies:

• Your intended use can be justified under fair dealing - see Copying without permission: fair dealing section below
• The material is out of copyright - see Copying without permission: out of copyright materials section below
• The material is available under an open licence (see Copying without permission: Creative Commons licences) or copyright notice allowing re-use for your purposes
• The University of Surrey subscribes to this material and provides it to its students under a licence allowing re-use for your purposes, e.g. ERA licence for broadcasts
• You have created the material yourself e.g. it is a photo that you took yourself, your own diagram or a video you made, and you own the copyright. Please note that you need to get the written consent of any people you have photographed or filmed and clear any third party copyright, for example if you have taken a photo of a copyrighted work of art.

If none of the above applies, you should apply for permission (see Getting permission section below) or consider a different source.

Once you establish that you can re-use the material, always acknowledge it fully. See the Creative Commons Best practices for attribution for more guidance.

The following table lists searchable sources that include material free to re-use under certain conditions.

With the permission of the copyright holder you can copy whatever is agreed and make as many copies as agreed. Look on the publisher’s website for information on rights / permissions / clearance: some websites offer online clearance.

When seeking permission bear in mind the following:

• Allow plenty of time. It can be difficult to track down the right person and publishers can take several weeks to reply 
• Copyright in films and music is often complex as it may belong to several creators: the screenwriter, the producer, the director, the composer of the soundtrack all have related rights in a film; similarly, the composer, lyricist, performers and makers of the sound recording all have rights in a work and all rights holders need to give permission for it to be used
• Be as specific as possible about how you intend to re-use the material. Will it be embedded in a presentation? Will it be posted on the web? How much do you intend to use and why? 
• In your request always state that you will fully acknowledge the source
• Get permission in writing and keep it for future reference
• Be aware that the copyright owner may impose conditions and costs
• Do not assume that no reply equals consent.

In some cases, copyright law allows you to use limited amounts of materials for specific purposes without obtaining permission. In UK law this is known as fair dealing. Whether your use of a material falls under ‘fair dealing’ or not mainly depends on the reason you are using the material and the amount you copy. Exceptions that may be relevant to you include:

• Non-commercial research and private study. This applies, for example, if you want to photocopy or download content from a source e.g. a book, for your own personal study.  There are no specific rules about how much you can copy, but as a rule of thumb you can make a single copy or a short extract from a work e.g. photocopy an extract from a book to read for an assignment. You may not make multiple copies, or share the extract with others
• Illustration for instruction. For example, you can use a ‘fair’ amount of the material in a coursework assignment (e.g. an essay or presentation) as long as the use is justified by the purpose i.e. including this material helps you answer a set question or illustrate a point
• Criticism, review and quotation. Again, you can copy a ‘fair’ amount of the material in an essay if this is justified by the context; for example, a digital reproduction of a work of art if your purpose is to discuss the painting or, say, the historical context of the painting
• Making accessible sources of a material if the original work is inaccessible to you due to a physical or mental impairment. This applies if there is no accessible copy commercially available already.

In all cases, fair dealing only applies if:

• The amount that you use is only as much as you need for your purpose
• The purpose is non-commercial and using the material is not likely to damage the interests of the author, i.e. it is not likely to affect sales of the work or is not used in a defamatory way
• You fully acknowledge the author and the source.

If you want to use more extensive amounts of the work, fair dealing does not apply. In these cases you need permission for the copyright holder.

In general terms the duration of copyright is as follows:

Written literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, films and video recordings: 70 years after the death of the creator(s). For films, this is 70 years after the death of the director, screenplay author and composer.

Sound and music recordings: 70 years from when it was first released.

Broadcasts, including cable programmes: 50 years from when the broadcast was made.

Layouts (typographical arrangements) of published editions of written works: 25 years from the end of the year of first publication.

Please note that copyright duration for unpublished works is subject to different rules. If in doubt, please contact us at: openresearch@surrey.ac.uk.

The aim of Creative Commons licences is to build content that “can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law”, while ensuring that the creators get credit for their work (see Creative Commons licences)

Licences range from the most liberal CC-BY licence, allowing users to share, adapt and re-use the work even commercially, to the most restrictive CC-BY-NC-ND licence, allowing users to share the work but not modify or use it commercially.

Finding and using Creative Commons materials. Materials under Creative Commons licences include texts, pictures, music and film. You can search for these materials through the CC website but make sure that you double-check the terms of re-use and that you attribute the creator of the work correctly, even when the licence allows you to re-use the material.

If you intend to include any material not created/owned by you in your essay, presentation, video, final year dissertation or any other piece of coursework, you will need to consider copyright. The same applies if you are preparing a Master’s or doctoral thesis. The following checklist will help you decide when and how you can use materials without permission or when you need to contact the copyright owner for permission. Remember that you must always fully attribute the source and give credit to the creator, even when permission is not necessary.

Please note that, if you are making a video as part of your studies, you should not use copyrighted music, audio files or video clips unless you have permission.