Guidelines for Students

Under Australian Copyright Law there are three main ways that copyright material can be used legally.
They are by:

Relying on the 'Fair Dealing' provisions of the act.
Obtaining licences from the appropriate licencing authorities
Obtaining written permission from the copyright owner.

Fair dealing

Students are able to reproduce copyright material without permission provided that the dealing is for research or study and that the copying is 'fair'.
The Act deems 'fair' to mean:

an article in a periodical publication (eg a journal article)
more than one article if on the same subject matter
a reasonable portion which is generally 10% or one chapter if the work is a published edition of 10 pages or more; or 10% of the words if in electronic form.

Fair dealing applies to work copied by an individual for their own use. Fair dealing provisions cannot be used to copy material for others eg lecturer for individual student or class.

Licences

Avondale University holds licences for copying other than for individual use as well as licences that cover many non educational activities. These include:- worship, assemblies, entertainmemt, Stormco etc. Students contemplating using third party material for any of these activities are strongly advised to consult with the Copyright Officer (Marilyn Gane x129) in the early planning stages to determine copyright liability.

Permissions

Permission from the copyright owner to use their material will override copyright legislation but it is important to ensure that:

the actual copyright owner is the one who gives permission
you have clearly stated the use you intend to make of the material. Use not explicitly covered in the request may breach copyright regulations
you always show on the material that it is being used with permission.

Use the Faculty/Student Request for Permission to Use Copyright Material form when making your request and allow plenty of time for the copyright owner to be located and permission sought.

Moral Rights

Whenever you use another person's intellectual property you must also ensure that you comply with the moral rights legislation that is contained in the Copyright Act. This means that you must correctly name and acknowledge the author and that you should not treat the work in a way that will be derogatory to it or the reputation of its creator.

Music, Computers, the Internet, Copyright and You

A number of recent court cases in Australia and overseas have focussed on such activities as:

ripping, burning, peer-to-peer networking, file-sharing and file-swapping or downloading from internet sites offering copyright music in formats such as MP3.

Students and staff are advised not to use the Avondale University network or Avondale University computers to copy, share or transmit music in such a way as to infringe copyright.

The following are examples of illegal activities:

copying songs onto hard drive from a CD/DVD that you (or a friend) own
sharing music files across a network
downloading copyright protected music from the Internet to your hard drive if you do not have express permission from the copyright owner.

Before you use anyone else's intellectual property in whatever format it is your responsibility to think about whether you will be infringing copyright legislation. Any such infringement is also an infringement of Avondale University regulations.

For answers to specific copyright questions please use Copyright Help