Copyright: Copyright for Lecturers

This video focuses mainly on the United States context but does provide a basic idea of copyright and its relation to teaching.

1. Sheet music, industrial journals, flashcards, classroom assessments and gray literature do not fall under the ICLA license and therefore should be linked to rather than placed in full on Blackboard unless you obtain permission from the copyright holder. In general be careful in using these types of resources.

2. If you wish to upload a video of a lecture or PowerPoint slides of a lecture make sure any material that is in either of these resources comply with copyright, as issues may arise if this is not the case.

3. Any material you hold the copyright for and is your own work can be freely put up on Moodle. 

4. Printed works can be copied as long as they fall within these conditions:

• no substantial part of the work can be copied and put on Blackboard.
• the library owns a copy of the work.
• the work can only be accessed in Blackboard by students of the college through password authentication.
• This applies only to countries whose publications are covered by th ICLA license,  To see a list of countries and excluded works click here. Any countries not on this list or creators who have decided to exclude their work from the license will require permission from the copyright holder to upload. An attribution to the author must be included. However, with items not covered by the license it may be better and safer  to give the students a link to the work in question through Blackboard, or email.

5. Websites, videos etc. are not covered by the license and if you wish to use them on Blackboard, please provide links to them. Especially for videos, check to see if the video uploaded is by the original owner as a lot of YouTube videos infringe on copyright, as the uploader of the video is not the original creator and so if this is the case, please do not link to it as you may infringe copyright. However if the video is published under creative commons or a creative commons license you may put up the video fully on your Blackboard page within the conditions met. 

6. Images cannot be put up onto Blackboard unless you have the copyright or the permission of the copyright holder to re-upload and so they are best avoided. Alternately, a link may be provided to the image in order to avoid any issues around copyright. It is also possible to find copyright-free images that can be used without worry. Clink the link here for a video of how to find copyright-free images.

Copyright checklist for uploading works to Blackboard

1. Can the work be linked to, instead of being fully uploaded - for example, a link to the ebook or article in question? Online sources, especially if they are in the library collection, should be linked where possible to rather than uploaded to avoid any copyright problems. 
2. What type of document is it? Under the ICLA license there are works that are not allowed to be copied (these include music sheets and government reports.) Please go the ICLA excluded works document to find out which items are excluded from being uploaded.
3. Is it a library book or your own book? The license only covers books that are owned by the college such as those in the library. If it is your own, normal copyright rules apply.
4. How much of the work are you uploading? It is up to 10% or a chapter when the license is applied to copies the institute owns. For personal copies, up to 5% or 1 chapter is permitted.
5. Keep a record as the Irish Copyright Agency will expect an assessment as to the quantity of material used, as this will impact on royalties paid to copyright owners and on the license agreement and fee the Institute pays. 
6. Remember to remove any items made available for this purpose once they are no longer needed for learning purposes.

While under the educational exemption of fair dealing, due to being used for educational purposes, lecturers should understand that there are limits to what they can use in class under the terms of the ICLA agreement. As is the case with students, all copyright works used should have a suitable attribution. 

The 2019 act has updated the provisions of the educational exceptions to include: 

That both copying and communicating the copy falls under the exceptions for education produced by the act.

The replacement of reproduction rather than reprographing of documents including digital forms of copying. 

Provisions for distance learning that allows the institution to communicate works of importance to distance students. Those students are allowed to make copies of those works. 

That as long as a sufficient acknowledgement is given copies can be made of works available through the internet.  

We would love feedback if this page was useful to you! If you have additional questions please reach out to us and we can try our best to help.