Copyright for teaching
Observing copyright requirements for teaching materials ensures compliance, maintains academic integrity standards and demonstrates best practice to students.
The copyright clearances section below outlines the range of schemes that permit certain uses of material in the classroom.
All third-party materials used in teaching resources should be appropriately attributed as required under moral rights provisions in the Copyright Act. It's common practice to observe these rights even if an item is in the public domain.
Copyright ownership
Under the Intellectual Property (IP) Statute, the University asserts ownership over all IP, including copyright in teaching materials created by staff members.
Licensing of University teaching materials, such as applying a Creative Commons licence or granting another institution permission to reuse it, requires approval from the author’s dean.
Course readings
Course coordinators are encouraged to use Reading Lists to share third-party material with students in the LMS, including books, articles, images, video and music. This is to ensure that copying limits, notices and reporting requirements are met, and gives students a consistent experience across courses.
Contact the Library for assistance with reading lists.
Copyright clearances for teaching materials
Incorporating resources for use in teaching materials such as presentations, course notes and handouts should rely on at least one of the following schemes.
The University attains ownership of teaching materials you create under employment arrangements. You can generally reuse material created by another University staff member, unless they created it under a previous employer or it’s been commercially published.
The Library has licences in place with over 120 vendors to provide staff and students with resources such as journals, eBooks, news, guides, and audio and video recordings.
While there are distinct licence terms for each resource, they typically permit staff to access (view), and possibly copy (download) or communicate (share) materials for educational purposes. Select ‘Show Licence’ in the Library collections entry to check the specific terms or contact Library Learning Support for assistance.
Note that licence terms, including those for library-subscribed materials, may take precedence over legislated rights and exceptions for some resources.
OERs consist of materials that are in the public domain (e.g. copyright expired) or have been released under a Creative Commons or other open licence that permits some degree of use without purchase or permission. OER materials include textbooks, courseware, images, video and music that is freely distributed for educators to copy and adapt.
Generally, no copyright applies to AI-generated material that has no human authorship. AI-generated sound and film recordings do attain copyright, but the protection doesn’t extend to any underlying AI content in the recording, such as dialogue or a music composition.
Some AI services still place limits on how you can reuse their outputs through their terms of use. In addition, AI outputs that recreate part of an existing work may infringe copyright.
The exclusive rights under copyright expire after a specified period. Although moral rights technically expire with the copyright, it is common practice to continue observing these rights.
Copyright durations can be broadly summarised as follows. However, there are numerous exceptions depending on the type of material and other factors, such as the publication date.
| Material type | Copyright duration |
|---|---|
| Text, images and music compositions | Life of the author + 70 years |
| Sound and video recordings | Date made + 70 years |
| Government material | Date made + 50 years |
In Australia, copyright has also expired for photographs made before 1955.
For specific copyright durations by material type, refer to the Attorney General’s Department's Duration of Copyright table.
Linking or embedding material from a public website means no copying is involved as the source website is serving up the material. Embedding should only be employed if the third-party site expressly permits it. YouTube, for example, provides specific HTML embed code to enable videos to be served elsewhere.
Only authorised, non-infringing material should be linked or embedded.
The Copyright Act provides an exception that permits the performance or communication of material in the course of educational instruction, so long as it is not conducted for profit. The exception covers playing films or sound recordings, reading out literary works and performing a play or musical work.
The exception does not extend to copying the work, so performances of copyright material should be excluded from lecture recordings unless otherwise permitted under some other scheme, such as the Screenrights licence for broadcast material.
Commercial streaming services such as Spotify or Netflix cannot be used in class as their terms of use generally prohibit public screenings and preclude other legislated rights.
The examination exception in the Copyright Act permits unlimited copying and communication of any type of material if it is used as part of an exam or assessment question or answer. It excludes practice tests that are not formally assessed.
The disability exceptions permit persons with a disability and organisations assisting persons with a disability to use material in certain circumstances.Refer to the Australian Copyright Council's Disability Access & Copyright Fact Sheet for details.
Material reproduced under this exception should include the following attribution:
Copied under the Copyright Act s.113E/F
If the intended use of a work doesn’t fall within one of the above schemes, consider obtaining permission. Copyright (©) notices should identify the rights holder, but if not, contact the publisher or author.
For academic texts, submit requests through CCC Marketplace if possible, or look for a ‘permission and clearances’ link (or similar) on online articles.
Consider the following wording for informal requests:
Can you kindly grant La Trobe University a worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to copy and communicate the following item for the purpose of including it in learning and teaching materials.
[add citation, link or attachment]
The University has agreements with several copyright collecting societies covering the use of text, images, TV and radio material, and music.
For example, the Copyright Agency licence generally permits the University to share up to 10% of a text, or one chapter or article, for educational (training) purposes.
In practice, the collecting society licences usually can’t be relied on for reproducing commercially-licensed material, such as eBooks, subscription journals and subscription streaming content.
Refer to the Copyright Collecting Society Licences page for details.
Contact us
If you require further information about copyright, please get in touch.
Some sections adapted from Copyright at Adelaide University, with permission.