Copyright

It’s important to start thinking about copyright when you are selecting & creating course materials for your students.

For example:

• Do you need to post an electronic journal or eBook to upload to Moodle?
• Do you need to photocopy a work for handouts or for a course pack?

Photocopying and scanning are copying. Therefore you may require permission from the copyright owner. Furthremore, acts of sharing 'works' like playing music in the classroom, or uploading a file from the Internet into Moodle may also require permission.

Here are some common educational activities that are regulated by the Copyright Act:

• scanning a chapter to upload to Moodle
• photocopying an article for class handouts or coursepacks,
• downloading a document or video from the internet to upload to Moodle (or printing copies for your class),
• teaching through the use of live TV or radio shows, or from recordings you have made of these shows,
• showing a film in class or online,
• playing music in class or online,
• performing a play or piece of music in the classroom or for an audience,
• displaying charts, graphs, or images scanned from a book or copied from the Internet in your lecture slides,
• recording a lecture that includes copyright-protected material, such as slides from a publisher, for students to view at a later time,
• translating a work into another language, and
• adapting a work, such as changing a novel into a screenplay, or adding or deleting a few sentences or paragraphs from an article.

So do you not necessarily require permission from the copyright owner to use all of these things for educational purposes. 

For example:

• You may be able to rely on user rights, also known as exceptions in the Copyright Act,  such as Fair Dealings, to use or share some copyright-protected works without permission from the copyright owner. 
• You may be able to use content available under a licence pre-arranged by The Library
• You may be able to use an open licence such as Creative Commons. 

You may be able to link to an online resource. Linking is not actually copying. Make sure the material was uploaded by the copyright owner or with the copyright owner’s permission. You don’t want to be linking to infringing material (eg, an article from Research Gate). See the sharing e-resources page for more information.

For information on sharing Course Materials  see the Answers to your Questions section. Here you will find information on Library Reserves, Using a Course Pack, and Using Moodle.

Teaching in the Classroom section of the guide includes information on Handouts, Showing Films and Online Videos, and Playing Music.

If you’re not sure if something you are doing constitutes copyright infringement, or you want to know how you can use copyright-protected material, ask email library@stfx.ca.

Copyright in Research and Publishing - Includes information on collaborating with research partners, publishing in journals and in books, and faculty ownership of copyright materials.

Content used on this guide was copied or adapted from:

1)  Copyright Decision Map from Western University with permission.

2) “Copyright Open Educational Resources” by CARL (2020). 

• All artwork © Giulia Forsythe, made available under a CC0 1.0 License.

•  Material for the Openly Licensed Materials video has been adapted from: Year of Open Licenses, https://www.yearofopen.org/what-are-openlicenses/ (CC-BY); Guelph Creative Commons Video: https://learningcommons.lib.uoguelph.ca/item/what-are-creativecommons-licenses (CC-BY-NC-SA)

• Scripted material and quizzes have been adapted from Copyright Literacy for Ontario College Employees, ©2014 Ontario Colleges, which is licensed under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 International License. Adapted material is shared here under a different license with permission. Scripts and quizzes have been modified to address an audience of instructors and staff at Canadian universities.

3)  Opening Up Copyright from the University of Alberta.CC-BY-SA 4.0