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Teaching practice often involves some reuse of third party copyright-protected content; material in which copyright subsists but does not belong to you or the University. Examples could include images (such as photographs, diagrams, paintings etc.), text extracts, film clips, music and sound recordings, song lyrics and student work.

Generally, copyright provides a high degree of protection, giving rights owners exclusive control over reuse of their works, including the copying of any substantial part. For example, distribution of scanned copies of book chapters in support of your teaching is permitted only under the terms of the CLA Higher Education Licence. To find out more about supplying course readings to students, please see the Library's .

However, UK law also provides copyright exceptions, limiting copyright owners’ exclusive rights in certain, specific circumstances. These include fair dealing 'for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction', fair dealing for the purpose of criticism or review, and fair dealing use of a quotation. Reasonable reuse of copyright works in the preparation and delivery of your non-commercial teaching is likely to constitute permissible 'fair dealing' under an applicable exception if satisfying the five conditions below:

• Your reuse is necessary to facilitate or support a teaching point or critique, so is not merely decorative or extraneous.
• Your reuse is not excessive, or more than necessary for your specific purpose.
• Your reuse does not otherwise conflict unduly with the interests of copyright owners or the 'normal exploitation' of their work (e.g. the expectation of charging reproduction fees for commercial stock photography).
• You include accompanying acknowledgement identifying the author and title/source (unless it would be impossible to do so).
• Your teaching is delivered in person on campus and/or in recordings uploaded to the University's secure, password-protected Virtual Learning Environment.

Whether reuse of third party copyright-protected material is within scope of an applicable exception, subject to a test of fair dealing, depends on the facts in each case. For example, reuse to illustrate a teaching point may be fair in lecture recordings accessible only to enrolled students, but unfair if made available to the general public. Similarly, reuse may be fair in slides shown in a lecture and captured in a recording, but unfair if multiple copies are disseminated to students in course packs. Ultimately, any assessment and demonstration of fair dealing depends entirely on the nature of the material and the context, purpose and extent of the reuse.

Statutory copyright exceptions are fundamental to enabling normal pedagogical practice in both the physical and virtual classroom. Nevertheless, colleagues must ensure that reuse of copyright works within Teaching & Learning materials remains fair and reasonable when relying on exceptions under UK law. Please read the additional guidance below to help ensure that your reuse of copyright works in a teaching context meets the conditions above. If you have any questions, please contact copyright@reading.ac.uk.

Illustration for instruction

This is the fair dealing copyright exception that relates specifically to acts of teaching for non-commercial purposes, which applies irrespective of whether such teaching is face-to-face, or delivered digitally via a secure, password-protected Virtual Learning Environment. Generally, you do not need to make edits to your teaching slides as a result of recording your lecture or creating a screencast, unless you plan to show entire audiovisual works.

Sufficient acknowledgement

Reuse under an applicable copyright exception must accompanied by identification of the work (by title or other description) and of the author, unless anonymous. Identifying any third party sources used in teaching materials also helps your students to find and cite these sources themselves. Conversely, omitting attribution would be unfair to the creator(s) of the protected work(s), unless they are unknown, and could result in copyright infringement.

If copying or reusing material you have found online, providing the name or URL of the website where you located the material is unlikely, in itself, to constitute sufficient acknowledgement.

Film & TV screenings

Most exceptions that facilitate teaching practice in the physical classroom apply equally to teaching delivered digitally or virtually. However, this is not the case for screenings of films and television programmes for educational purposes on campus. The screening of entire audiovisual works (with the exception of very short indivisible works used under the fair dealing conditions specified above) must not be captured within lecture recordings created for asynchronous delivery.

Generally, it is preferable to link to audiovisual content, such as programmes and clips that you might normally show within a lecture on campus, rather than attempting to stream these within recordings of teaching delivered digitally. Programmes and clips accessed via the Box of Broadcasts service may be embedded directly within the Virtual Learning Environment using the embed codes provided, for non-commercial, educational use.

It is permissible to link to third party YouTube videos as long as you avoid sharing clips that you know to be infringing (i.e. unauthorised copies of third party copyright-protected content). Sharing third party videos that have not been uploaded by or with the authorisation of copyright owners carries other risks, including that videos could be taken down without notice or 'monetised' with adverts placed before or during a video, which might be unsuitable for teaching purposes. Linking to a video you know to be infringing can itself constitute copyright infringement.

The public domain

Note that not all third-party material is protected by copyright, so some works are free to copy and reuse without any copyright implications. These are said to be in the 'public domain', which includes:

• Material that is too trivial or commonplace to qualify for copyright protection, e.g. facts or names.
• Material that has been expressly dedicated to the public domain by the rights owner, e.g. using the Creative Commons Zero ('CC0') tool.
• Material in which copyright has expired or never subsisted, e.g. works of antiquity and folklore.

In this context the term 'public domain' refers specifically to material that is no longer, or was never, protected by copyright. This does not include material that has merely been made available to the public, or become public knowledge.

Interactive Q&A

This resource provides answers to some frequently asked copyright questions about the use of third party copyright-protected material for teaching purposes. Note that you are not expected to read every answer in detail; instead, you are encouraged to focus on the questions that are likely to be most relevant to your teaching. Clicking on any question will link you directly to the answer to that question.

For the best experience, it is recommended that you open this slide show using the desktop version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you do not have the desktop version of Microsoft PowerPoint, a PDF version is also available.

To navigate through the slides and return to the table of questions, please use the arrows found in the bottom right corner of the answer slides - do not simply scroll through the document linearly. Please report any difficulties viewing the slides to the Copyright & Compliance Officer.