Dealing with copyright

Deakin University takes copyright compliance very seriously and expects its staff (and students) to ensure that whatever they copy or communicate online (see the definition for 'Communication': What is copyright?) is copied or communicated legally.

Academic staff in particular need to be aware of the limitations and requirements of the Copyright Act (in relation to an educational context) and also of the terms of the other licences or agreements upon which they may depend in order to legally copy and/or communicate study materials or other works within the university community and beyond.

Preparing study materials	Library staff	Students
Preparing study materials The Copyright Act: Educational Provisions What are the amounts that Part VB allows? What does Part VA allow? Moral Rights Other relevant parts of the Copyright Act Going online Teaching face-to-face Guest lecturers	Copying or communication performed by Library Staff	Copying and Communication (emailing) for your own individual study or research
	Copying or communicating for other purposes	Copyright and using the University's IT Facilities
	Marketing and promotional purposes Provision of commercial educational programs or community accessed professional development Research and copyright	ITSD information - opens in a new window

Early Consideration of Copyright Compliance!: If you’re a staff member developing or revising a unit, please consider copyright matters as soon as you begin to plan the unit! Copyright compliance is best dealt with BEFORE you need to copy materials or before the unit DSO or other website actually gets produced or goes live. You may even need to obtain permission for certain materials and this can often take weeks to arrange. So don’t leave copyright matters to last minute—remember: the university will NOT reproduce or put up online ANY material which is not copyright compliant!

Copyright compliance for a unit is the responsibility of the Unit Chair and compliance is to be assessed across all the study materials provided for that unit.

Copyright, Acknowledgment and Adaptation
One of the most important aspects of copyright—and an aspect that applies to everyone, whether working within a university or not—concerns the right of the author or creator of a work to be acknowledged. We are all legally required to clearly indicate the source of the materials we use or reproduce and which are not of our own creation, and particularly where the material is reproduced alongside our own work (in study guides for example, or on a website). You need to clearly indicate, preferably with the material (either at the beginning of a reading, as a caption on a diagram or image, or directly after a quotation) the author and the source of any material that is not your own.

Similarly, even if you adapt someone else’s work to create a work of your own—perhaps a diagram or table containing data which you would like to present with your own data—it is advisable to clearly indicate that your ‘work’ (diagram, table, etc. ) ‘is based on or adapted from a model or method created by [the author or creator] in the following publication … ’ (i.e. at least give their name and the source details for their original work, diagram, table etc.).

This ‘right of acknowledgment’ forms part of the ‘Moral Rights’ provisions in the Copyright Act . Be aware also that these provisions include the author/creator or copyright holder’s right to ensure that their work is not misrepresented or presented in a manner which might adversely affect their integrity or reputation.

Checking for Copyright Compliance
Copyright compliance for a unit is the responsibility of the Unit Chair and compliance is to be assessed across all the study materials provided for that unit. To assist in ensuring that material for a unit collectively complies with the law, staff compiling or writing study materials for a Unit Chair can use the Deakin Copyright Record form to record the details of ALL secondary source material which is going to be copied or communicated for the unit. This form can then be forwarded to the Unit Chair to assist them to assess the copyright compliance of ALL the materials supplied for a given unit.

Alternatively, Unit Chairs and their staff may wish to keep a single electronic chart or table for a given unit in order to monitor compliance across the various study material provided for that unit. The chart can be organised according to the various sources for the study materials and, as the unit is being developed or while it is in progress during semester, each contributor of study materials can add to the chart and look to see what is there already for a given source work so as to avoid compromising compliance for the unit.

Unit Chairs should check that the materials copied or communicated for a given unit are compliant according to:

the ‘reasonable portion’ limits or other requirements (e.g. labelling) as specified in Part VB (for text, images and music in written form) or Part VA (for off-air broadcasts) of the Copyright Act
or according to
the terms of any special licence agreement which may govern the reproduction of that material (for example: the licence terms governing the use of materials from subscription databases; the terms of the licence agreement the university has with AusStats, or the High Court of Australia, and so on : see sections Other Agreements and Copying/Communicating by Permission.

Unit Chairs and their unit staff also need to ensure that any material that is subsequently added to a unit’s study package during the semester (uploaded into DSO), will not result in the unit’s initial copyright compliance being compromised. At any given time, a unit’s study package has to be copyright compliant across all materials provided and across all forms of delivery.