Copyright exceptions can help you legitimately make use of copyrighted material in your teaching and research, but unfortunately the exceptions rarely clearly define what is and is not acceptable. In many cases it comes down to a matter of interpretation, and this inevitably involves the risk that your interpretation will not match the copyright holder's or - to consider the possibility that it should come to court - a judge's.
The guidance given on this page aims to clarify the issues as much as possible, but the Library is rarely going to be able to give hard and fast answers around what is acceptable as far as exceptions are concerned. When fair dealing is invoked as a requirement in the exception, as it often is, one of the things that will need to be assessed is whether the amount of a work you copy is appropriate for the teaching or research purpose that it is used for. You, as the teacher or researcher, are best placed to judge that. Similarly, you will know best whether it is essential to use the copyrighted resource or whether an alternative that is covered by permission or a licence would be a suitable replacement. It is for these reasons that we ask you to make your own judgement on how defensible your copying is and whether the benefit gained from the copying outweighs the risk.
To help judge the risk of your proposed copying, ask yourself the following questions:
If the answers tend to be 'no', then the risk is probably low.
Section 32 of the legislation is the exception "Illustration for instruction," which allows you to do some copying for the purposes of teaching and setting exam questions. It also allows students to copy as part of their learning or in answering exam questions. To qualify under this exception your use of the work must:
If you wanted to discuss a few pages of a chapter in detail in class, then it is likely that this exception would allow you to include a copy of those pages as part of a digital presentation or paper handout for the class.
If you wanted your students to read the whole (or most) of a chapter, then it is unlikely that this exception would allow you to copy and distribute the scan to your students. Instead, you could ask Solent Library's Digidocs service if they can make a copy of the chapter that can be distributed to your students via a reading list on SOL.
See the section "Exceptions for education and teaching" on the Copyright User website.
See section 32 "illustration for instruction" of the section 32 "illustration for instruction" of the copyright legislation.
On the interpretation of the phrase "illustration for instruction", see section 6.8.2 of HUDSON, E., 2022. Updated Copyright Guidance for Using Films, Audiovisual Works and Images in Online Teaching: Beyond the Covid Pandemic.
Section 30 of the copyright legislation is the exception for "Criticism, Review, Quotation, and News Reporting." This exception allows the quotation of a work, including in commercially published or broadcast venues, provided that:
If you wanted to quote a few lines from a poem as part of a literary essay, it is likely this exception would cover that.
If you wanted to quote a whole poem, then this exception might allow that, but it would depend on how well your use of the poem met the fair dealing criteria.
See the relevant section of the Copyright User website
See section 30, Criticism, review, quotation, and news reporting, of the copyright legislation.
See section 7, and especially 7.3.3 on the amount of quotation allowed, of HUDSON, E., 2022. Updated Copyright Guidance for Using Films, Audiovisual Works and Images in Online Teaching: Beyond the Covid Pandemic.
Section 29 of the copyright legislation is the exception for "Research and private study." This allows copying of works provided that:
If you wanted to use a small extract of a work in a non-commercially published paper, it is likely that this exception would cover that use.
It is likely that copying a chapter from a book for personal use would be covered by this exception, though note that it would probably be covered by the CLA licence, so you need not rely on this exception here.
It is much less likely that copying substantial portions of a book would be covered by this licence, as this could be deemed to have impacted the market for the work (as it means you do not need to buy a copy), and so the copying would not be fair dealing. But see Torremans (2019, p. 273) for a deeper consideration of this matter [TORREMANS, P., 2019. Hollyoak and Torremans intellectual property law, 9th ed. Oxford: OUP].
See the relevant page of the Copyright User website.
See section 29, Research and private study, of the copyright legislation.
Section 29A of the copyright legislation is the exception for "text and data analysis for non-commercial research," This allows you to make copies of works provided that ...
This legislation was drafted before the recent explosion of availability of AI tools, and no clear consensus has yet been reached by the copyright community about issues raised by these tools. It seems likely, however, that feeding works into an AI tool that you do not control yourself would be considered to be transferring the work to another person, and so would not be permissible under this exception.
See the relevant page of the Copyright User website.
Sections 31A-F of the copyright legislation are the exceptions relevant to disabled persons. The exceptions are intended to help a disabled person get the full enjoyment of a work that might otherwise be denied to them.
The Library has an Alternative Formats service that takes advantage of this exception to provide accessible copies to students registered with Access Solent. We recommend that you advise any students who need accessible copies to ask Access Solent to refer them to the Alternative Formats service.
But individuals, or people acting on their behalf, may make copies for their personal use under this exception provided that:
See the page about the disability exception on the Copyright User website.
See section 31A (and subsequent sections, up to 31F) of the copyright legislation.
Section 34 of the copyright legislation is the exception concerning the "performing, playing or showing of a work in course of activities of educational establishment." It states that it is not considered a "public performance" to perform, play, or show a work for the purposes of instruction. This means that it is ok to, e.g., play a film to your class, when the following conditions apply:
The requirement for a copy to be legitimately owned is not explicitly stated by the legislation, but if the university is to treat copyright responsibly, then it should not avoid purchasing copies of works used in its teaching. If you include a film etc. on the reading list you submit to the library, we will buy a copy if feasible.
The requirement for the playing or performance to be in person, rather than online, is a legal nicety. If you're keen to do it online, we recommend that you consult section 4 of Dr. Emily Hudson's "Updated Copyright Guidance for Using Films, Audiovisual Works and Images in Online Teaching: Beyond the Covid Pandemic" for the detail. To summarise, strictly speaking, this exception would apply to playing or performing a work online, and so to, e.g., play a DVD over a Teams call, would not be a public performance. However, it might be considered a communication to the public, and therefore fall foul of another area of copyright. And you should also beware of making copies of a DVD for class use. If you want to use film and video content online in your teaching, please consult our guidance on film and video.
See the section "Performing, playing or showing copyright literary, dramatic or musical works in the course of activities of an educational establishment" on the Copyright User website.
Section 35 of the copyright legislation is the exception for "recording by educational establishments of broadcasts." This exception allows for the recording (or copying of such a recording) of a broadcast and the subsequent communication of the copy/recording to staff or students at the University, provided that:
In combination with the University's ERA licence, this exception means that we can make recordings of any free-to-air broadcasts and distribute them to students.
See the section "Recording of a broadcast for use in an educational establishment" on the Copyright User website.
See section 35, Recording by educational establishments of broadcasts, of the copyright legislation.
Section 36 of the legislation is the exception "Copying and use of extracts of works by educational establishments." This allows the University to copy up to 5% of a work (over any 12 month period) for teaching purposes, but excludes the following types of resources:
The clause excluding copying of anything that could be covered by a licence means that in practice this exception is rarely applicable. It also means that you cannot use this exception to distribute copies of a text to your students unless you have first asked the library's Digidocs service if they can provide a copy under the CLA licence.
All copying under this exception is subject to the following conditions:
If you wanted your students to read the whole (or most) of a chapter, then you should not copy and distribute the copy to them under this exception. Instead, you should ask the Library's Digidocs service if they can make a copy of the chapter that can be distributed to your students via a reading list on SOL. They will be able to check if a licence applies instead, and if it does not, they would advise on the best course of action.
See the section "Copying and using extracts of works" on the Copyright User website.
There are more exceptions to the copyright legislation than we have discussed on these pages, but they are less likely to be relevant to your teaching and research. To find out more, consult the Exceptions page of the Copyright User website.