Copyright Materials Policy

Application

This policy applies to all staff members and students of the University.

Purpose

To outline responsibilities regarding the use of copyright works, with the objectives of:

  • reducing staff members’ and University exposure to the risks associated with the use of third party copyright work
  • assisting staff members and students to make full legal use of the materials at their disposal
  • protecting the University’s interest in its and its staff members’ teaching materials
  • protecting the University’s reputation
  • clearly identifying responsibilities
  • promoting copyright compliance

Introduction

The University, as both a producer and consumer of copyright works, seeks to promote respect for copyright by staff members and students.

The Copyright Policy is intended to promote and encourage excellence and innovation in scholarly research and teaching by identifying and protecting the rights of the University, its staff members and students.

Policy

1. Staff members and students must comply with the Copyright Act 1994.

2. In particular, the following actions are a breach of the Act unless one of the exceptions in the Act applies:

  • copying, communicating, performing or showing in public of a work protected by copyright without permission
  • disseminating instructional material without appropriate permission from the copyright owner
  • using IT resources for copying, communicating, downloading, offering for sale or selling copyright works or uploading copyright works onto any website, learning management system, digital repository or social media platform without permission, or in violation of licence restrictions or other contractual agreements
  • disseminating for any purpose, including offering for sale, the whole or any part of a video or audio recording of any University course, unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course convenor or academic head in writing
  • copying the whole or a substantial part, other than a single copy for private study, and distributing for any purpose, including offering for sale, instructional material provided by a staff member as part of a University course unless authorised by the University in advance and explicitly permitted in writing by the course convenor or the copyright holder (if the course convenor is not the copyright holder)

3. All staff intending to copy or use:

  • copyright works for the educational purposes of the University must be familiar with the provisions of the Act and the University's negotiated copyright licences, which govern the copying of print periodicals and books, newspapers, broadcasts, films communicated by the Internet and music
  • electronic resources licensed by the Library for distribution to students must provide direct links to the content on the licensed providers site unless a librarian has checked copying entitlements for that particular electronic resource and given clearance for the content to be uploaded onto the learning management system or copied and distributed to students in hard copy form

4. The University reserves the right to remove content from IT Resources and University publications which is found by reasonable enquiry to be infringing.

5. Staff and students should notify breaches of this policy to the Copyright Officer to facilitate the management of any associated risks.

Definitions

The following definitions apply to this document:

Act refers to the Copyright Act 1994.

Copyright work refers to those original works referred to in section 14 of the Copyright Act 1994 and further defined in section 2 of that statute or their equivalents under other applicable law and includes a work of joint authorship.

Electronic resource refers any work encoded and made available for access through the use of a computer and includes music, images, books, texts and journals in electronic form to which the University Library subscribes or pays licence fees to enable access by Staff and Students.

Note - electronic resource does not include words licensed under a Creative Common licence or other licence personal to the individual user.

Instructional material refers to any copyright work prepared specifically for the purpose of assisting teaching and learning and includes but is not limited to, lecture notes, course outlines, course readings and power point slides. Instructional material may also contain copyright works provided in accordance with the University’s licensing arrangements or other contractual agreements.

IT resources refers to any University owned or operated hardware or software and the data that is used or stored on it.

Librarian refers to a person who is authorised by the University Librarian to give the approval for the copying and downloading of content from electronic resources held by the Library for distribution to students.

Public refers to an audience which includes persons other than staff and students involved in the course of activities of the University or third parties who are providing instruction as part of the activities of the University.

Staff member(s) refers to an individual employed by the University on a full or part-time basis. This includes permanent, fixed-term or casual staff members.

Third party refers to any person or organisation other than the University.

University refers to the University of Auckland and includes all subsidiaries.

Key relevant documents

Include the following:

Document management and control

Prepared by: Copyright Officer
Owned by: Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic)
Approved by: The Vice-Chancellor
Date approved:
Review date: