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Copyright for educators

Copyright Services can assist academic and professional staff at UniSQ with copyright issues relating to their learning and teaching endeavours.

As a staff member, UniSQ owns the copyright of any work you produce under your employment. When creating teaching resources, the Copyright Act allows educators to use some copyrighted content under our educational statutory licences. The usage of the content depends on: 

  • the type of content (e.g. book, TV broadcast) and;
  • what you want to do with the content (e.g. copy, perform, publish).

Creative Commons licensed content may have less restrictive legal requirements and might be an easier option in your course design. UniSQ supports the use of Open Access resources in course design.  

Educators can copy and communicate a ‘reasonable portion’ of text and artistic works for educational purposes. This includes: 

  • 10% or one chapter of a book (whichever is greater)
  • one article of a journal, newspaper or periodical (two or more if articles are on the same subject matter)
  • one literary or dramatic work, comprising no more than 15 pages
  • any image (including tables and diagrams) that is not separately published
  • the entirety of a book that can no longer be commercially obtained within a reasonable time and at an ordinary commercial price. A reasonable time equates to six months for textbooks and 30 days for other material.

Remember to attribute text and artistic works with the name of the copyright owner, the title of the work and an indication to where the material was copied from (e.g. URL). 

Educators can copy and communicate radio and TV broadcasts for educational purposes, including:

  • any TV or radio broadcast 
  • podcasts or webcasts, previously broadcasted on an Australian channel.

Radio and TV broadcasts can be shown in a lecture, copied on a CD for distribution to students or communicated to students via StudyDesk. 

Remember to attribute radio and TV broadcasts with the name of the program, the name of the broadcaster and the date of the broadcast.  

Educators can copy and communicate music for educational purposes under a music licence, known as the APRA/AMCOS licence. If your desired piece of music is listed on the APRA/AMCOS search page, you can: 

  • play the music in class and include extracts in UniSQ teaching material, such as online lecture recordings
  • play music at official UniSQ events held in Australia, provided no admission fee is charged. 

Remember to attribute music with the name of composers, lyricists and the title of each musical work. 

UniSQ has signed licence agreements with vendors for the use of the Library’s electronic databases. This means there are conditions and restrictions attached to the use of this material. You may link students directly to content from the database. If you wish to use or copy the content in any other way, you must confirm that our licence agreement allows it. 

If you wish to use content that falls outside the scope of our subscription licences or our educational statutory licences, you will need to seek permission from the copyright owner. 

Contact us

Copyright Services
copyright@unisq.edu.au

Copyright frequently asked questions

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