This guide is intended to help staff and students of the University to avoid breaking the law and to stay within the terms of the various licences the University has agreed with rights owners or their representatives. Copyright is a complex area and this guide cannot cover every aspect of it. A section of Further reading is included to provide additional help. You might also wish to consult the University's Copyright Policy for further advice.

What is copyright?

Copyright can be defined as the exclusive rights permitted to the owners of intellectual property covering its reproduction, publication, dissemination or performance. Anything that is written, printed, recorded or produced in any form is subject to copyright. Copyright covers printed and electronic material, illustrations, films, recorded music, computer software and all intellectual property.

What is not covered?

Copyright provides protection for a specific period of time. When that time elapses, the material is considered to be in the public domain. Published literary or artistic works enter the public domain 70 years from the end of the year of the death of the creator of the work. An additional protection of 25 years is given to a publisher's copyright in the typographical arrangement of a work, even if the work itself is in the public domain. New editions of out-of-copyright material are also protected. If you are uncertain if something is in the public domain, you should seek advice. A list of contacts is available in the University’s Copyright Policy.

Legally permitted copying

The law permits the copying of copyright material for private study and research within certain limits. That permission is sometimes referred to as "fair dealing". The exact definition of what constitutes fair dealing is not certain but copying can only be made for non-commercial research or private study. Making multiple copies of the same material does not fall within fair dealing. The broadly accepted guidelines for the amount of a work that may be copied under fair dealing permit the copying of:

one article from an issue of a journal
up to one chapter or 5%, whichever is greater, of a book
one poem or short story of up to ten pages from an anthology

Copying is also permitted for purposes of criticism or review but the amount copied is limited to a single extract of up to 400 words or a number of extracts, each of no more than 300 words and totalling no more than 800 words.

The material must be published and the copy must be accompanied by adequate acknowledgement of its source.

Copying, except for musical scores, is also permitted for examination questions.

Except with permission, no other substantial copying of copyright material is legally allowed.

Copying with permission

If you are the copyright owner or have obtained written permission from the owner, then copying is freely permissible. Some publishers provide blanket permission to copy for educational purposes, or chose to waive their rights and permit non-commercial reproduction; this permission is usually stated in the work itself. Copying in amounts in excess of that permitted by fair dealing is also allowed under the terms of certain licences.

Rights owners

Initially, the creator of the work owns the copyright unless the work is produced in the course of employment (when copyright is held by the employer) but this right may be sold, assigned or bequeathed to others. Frequently, the copyright of work published in an academic monograph or journal is assigned to the publisher.

Rights owners and publishers typically form together in associations and employ agencies to deal with issues relating to permissions and licences. There are a number of corporate bodies handling licensing agreements that permit copying to an extent greater than allowed by legislation. The University pays substantial annual fees to take part in these agreements. A full list of the licenses to which Liverpool has signed up, is available in the University Copyright Policy.

Other rights owners, Ordnance Survey, for example, and HMSO in respect of Crown copyright, allow a certain amount of copying, within certain restrictions, to staff and students in Higher Education institutions.

Copyright Licensing Agency

The provision of copyright material for teaching purposes, with the expectation that students on a particular course will copy the same material (thus producing multiple copies), is not covered by fair dealing. In this area The Copyright Licensing Agency is the body that deals with photocopying rights and with which the University has entered into a licensing agreement. The licence does not permit unlimited copying but does allow staff and students certain rights that otherwise would be illegal in respect of photocopying and of scanning print material.

CLA HE Trial Licence for Photocopying and Scanning

Under the terms of the licence, the limitations permitted under fair dealing are extended to allow multiple copying and the provision of course packs, as long as the number of copies made does not exceed the number of students on the course for which it is provided:

one article from an issue of a journal
up to one chapter or 5%, whichever is greater, of a book
one poem or short story of up to ten pages from an anthology

The blanket licence does not cover certain excluded categories such as some specifically identified publications; material produced by non-participating publishers; printed music; maps; separate illustrations and photographs. A list of these exclusions is available on the CLA's web site Excluded categories and works list.

While most UK publishers, and many other publishers worldwide, participate in the scheme, some have chosen not to authorise the CLA in respect of some or all of their publications. For copying in excess of that permitted under fair dealing, permission will need to be obtained from these publishers directly. Not all U.S. publishers are part of the licensing agreement. Those that are can be found on the CLA's List of US participating publishers.

Digitising print material

Although it may be permissible to scan or digitise copyright material to the extent listed for fair dealing (Legally permitted copying) for non-commercial research or private study, the law is not conclusive. It is advisable, therefore, to seek permission from the owner of the material before digitising it if the material is not covered by the CLA Trial Licence. If a part of a work is digitised for private use, there are certain safeguards that must be followed:

The text must not be altered or changed in any way and its original source should be fully acknowledged
The digital copy must not be emailed or copied to anyone else, placed on a web site (even a secure one), networked, shared or be made accessible through a network

It is essential to seek the rights owner's permission if you wish to digitise a separate photograph, illustration, map or other graphical material that is not covered by the CLA Licence.

Permission to digitise under the terms of the CLA Licence

The blanket photocopying licence with the CLA has recently been augmented to permit the scanning or digitising of printed copyright material for teaching purposes. The licence operates under blanket terms and conditions. It combines the right to scan and make available digitised material but with a number of limitations and obligations.

The scanning licence permits the making of digital copies of extracts of printed books and journals and the supplying of those copies to students on a course of study by making them available in a restricted course collection or VLE, such as VITAL, for viewing, downloading or printing out (once only) by the course users. Digital copies may also be distributed on CD-ROMs or other transportable storage media provided that they are delivered only to the students on the course of study for which they are created

Restrictions

The original printed material that is scanned must be owned by the HEI (or be a copyright fee paid copy from a supplier such as the British Library) and published in the UK. Material which is listed in the CLA's List of excluded works or in the additional list of Works excluded from scanning under the HE trial licence is not covered.

Quantity
The usual limitations, familiar from the Photocopying Licence, on the quantity of material covered by the licence also apply: no more than 5% or one chapter of a book and no more than 5% or one article on a journal issue, and so on.

Electronic material
The licence does not cover any rights for the digital copying of electronic material. For information on copying from electronic sources, see Electronic copyright.

Availability
Material digitised under the terms of the licence may only be made available to those students registered on the course. The licence does not permit the creation of a "library" of digitised material available to students on different courses across the institution.

Period of availability
The period of time for which the digitised material may be made available to the students is also limited. Departments are required regularly to review and weed course collections and to remove digital copies as soon as the teaching or assessment of the individual unit or course of study is completed. Digital copies can only be retained in cases where there is seamless delivery of a course of study.

Obligations

Who may scan?
The CLA imposes a number of requirements with the licence. Permission to create and add digital copies to a course collection is restricted to "designated individuals". These may be specifically named individuals or members of a defined category of post holders, "Course Administrator", for example. The actual physical scanning need not be done by the "designated individual" but can be delegated to any other members of the department.

Copyright Notice
All digital copies must include a copyright notice that describes the restrictions on the use that can be made of the copy. The notice must also include: the name of the designated person who authorised scanning; the name of the course of study; the number of students registered on the course; the duration of the course in weeks; the ISBN or ISSN of the source; the name of the publisher, author, title, journal title and volume number; page numbers; the source of the original (whether owned by the University or acquired from elsewhere); and, if a digital version exists, the reason the material has been scanned. A pro forma notice is available: Copyright notice (Word doc).

Reporting and compliance

Although the licence is a blanket rather than transactional one, as licensee, The University of Liverpool is required, at six monthly intervals, to supply the CLA with details of every item scanned under the terms of the licence. The CLA's Compliance Unit will also conduct, by prior arrangement, onsite audits at a number of HEIs to verify that all digital copies created under licence have been correctly recorded and reported. The auditing procedure requires the CLA to have full access to any digital copies stored in the course collection area of the secure network.

Please note: the distribution of scanned extracts of copyright protected material without either having first secured the rights owner's permission or having fully complied with the terms of the Licence, might expose both the individual responsible and the University of Liverpool to charges of infringing copyright legislation.

Procedure

The intention at this stage is that academic departments will be responsible for the scanning of items under the terms of the licence and will host the digitised copies within the appropriate VITAL module.

Every digitised copy must be prefaced by the completed Copyright Notice. To enable the Library to make the necessary reports to the CLA, a copy of each notice should be sent electronically to the Subject Librarian responsible for liaison with the academic department. A complete list of Subject Librarians and their departmental responsibilities is available on the Library's Subject Contacts web page.

Other licenses

The University also has licensing agreements with:

The Educational Recording Agency covering the recording of television and radio broadcast material for educational purposes
The Newspaper Licensing Agency allowing multiple copies to be made from major and some local and regional newspapers
The Open University to permit the use of OU broadcast material

For further information on what these agreements permit, see the University's Copyright Policy.

Electronic copyright

There are no specific statutory provisions covering the copyright of electronic material but all works published electronically are protected. Most electronic resources are made available for use in HEIs under the terms of the licence by which they are supplied and these terms may vary from product to product.

Although all publishers permit the downloading of an article to your PC or making a print copy for your personal (non-commercial) use, it may not be permissible to upload a file to a secure intranet like VITAL and certainly not to a publicly accessible web site

Some publishers do permit papers to be uploaded to a secure intranet:

Blackwell Publishing
JSTOR
Kluwer
Springer
Wiley

However, when uploading a PDF file from one of these publishers into VITAL, you must:

Ensure that only registered students of the University of Liverpool, not guests, can access the paper.
Give an appropriate acknowledgement of the source, listing title and author of the paper, the title of the journal, publisher and copyright notices if appropriate.
Delete items from VITAL when they are no longer required for teaching.

An alternative and recommended method is to provide a link to the file at the publisher's web site. Information on how best to create a stable link is available on the Learning and Teaching Support module on VITAL.

Many publishers only publish one or two journals, and it is impractical for the Library to check the licence terms and conditions for each one. If you wish to include a journal paper from any publisher not listed above, first try to create a stable link to the file at the publisher's site using the guide on VITAL. If you cannot create a stable link, get in touch with your subject librarian.

For more information on electronic copyright in the context of licensed electronic resources, see the Library's " Acceptable Use of Electronic Resources" page.

THE LIBRARY: TITLE

COPYRIGHT

Introduction