Canvas and copyright - Multimedia resources

Posted on: 27 August 2021 by Strategic Change Communications Team in Canvas at Liverpool

In his second blog about Canvas and copyright, Gordon Sandison from the Library focuses on multi-media resources, revealing a vast recording archive that can be used to support your teaching without any copyright worries. But a word of caution, you do need to be careful when copying stuff off the web. Read Gordon’s blog to find out more.

Educational institutions benefit from copyright law

Just like text-based materials, multi-media resources, such as broadcasts, films, music and podcasts, are protected by copyright, and this has to be taken into account when using these in teaching. However, there are options available in order to utilise these materials.

The good news is that copyright law, while protecting the interests of rights holders, also recognises a number of situations in which educational establishments are allowed to benefit from a suspension of the rules that normally govern the use of copyright protected works.

These are called ‘permitted acts’ and are sometimes referred to as ‘copyright exceptions’ - exceptions to copyright law - which allow educational institutions limited use of copyright protected works without the need to ask for permission.

These permitted acts/copyright exceptions allow the use of all types of copyright protected works to illustrate a teaching point as well as for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation.

However, permitted acts/copyright exceptions only apply if the use of the work is fair, or as the law puts it, ‘fair dealing’.

There is no legal definition of ‘fair dealing’, so using protected materials will always involve a judgement call. Factors identified as relevant in determining if a particular use of a work is fair include:

whether the amount of the work taken was reasonable and appropriate and,
whether it was necessary to use the amount you have taken.

In short, you should only use as much as is required for your purpose, and all resources must be acknowledged and referenced. If you are unsure, please contact me for guidance.

Screenings and remote teaching

Another permitted act/copyright exception allows the performing, playing or showing of any literary, dramatic or musical works for teaching purposes. So, whole films can be shown and musical works can be played to your students in lectures.

The move to online teaching has had an impact on our ability to show full length feature films or play full musical scores or compositions to students as part of scheduled teaching activities. If you feel you need to show whole films as part of your online teaching, then please contact me for details of how the Library can help you do this.

Our licences and resources allow multi-media use in teaching

The University holds an Educational Recording Agency or ERA Licence, which means you can legally make recordings or copies of all scheduled free to air radio and television broadcasts, providing it’s for educational, non-commercial use.

Our ERA licence covers feature films plus online or on-demand services, such as BBC iPlayer, All 4, ITV Hub and Demand 5.

Podcasts from ERA Member services can also be downloaded as well as foreign language broadcasts receivable in the UK (providing they are not part of paid-for cable package).

This means that you have access to a huge wealth of resources which you can legitimately use in your teaching – free from copyright worries. Recordings can be shown during a lecture/class, in PowerPoint presentations as well as being uploaded into Canvas (or VITAL).

To meet the requirements of our ERA Licence, you will need to keep a written record of all the copies you’ve made noting:

The title of the programme recorded

Where the recording is kept
Who made the recording
How many copies of the recording were made

You also need to clearly label all your ERA recordings, wherever you use them – including in Canvas – stating:

Date (when the recording was made)
Name of the broadcaster
Programme title
Plus the wording: This recording is to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence

Over 2 million broadcasts dating back to the 1970s

As part of the ERA Licence, UK-based University staff and students also have access to Box of Broadcasts (BoB), which has an enormous archive of 2.2 million broadcasts dating back to the 1970s plus over 75 free-to-air channels.

Through BoB, you can create your own playlists, clips and clip compilations, search programme transcripts and subtitles, and embed content in your Canvas courses. As well as the usual UK channels, BoB includes 10 foreign language channels as well (Italian, French and German) plus the BBC Shakespeare Archive content dating back to the 1950s.

You can also schedule recordings in advance and recordings can be viewed on mobile devices – so students could watch them via their new Canvas mobile app.

Access to BoB is via institutional log in and once you are signed in, you will have your own individual account.

The Library also has a subscription to the Kanopy online streaming service, which contains documentaries, foreign films, classic cinema, independent films and educational videos.

Web resources

Things get a little trickier when it comes to uploading web-sourced materials to Canvas – such as content from YouTube. Before re-using any content, please make sure that the materials have been made available online legitimately in the first place.

It’s important not to confuse content which is in the ‘public domain’, which means its copyright has expired or been waived, with content that is accessible to the public simply by the fact that it is available online.

This is not the same thing.

Therefore, you need to be careful about what you are copying or using, and its good academic practice to check your sources.

For YouTube, this means looking for the ‘tick’ which shows that it is an official channel. Other content may have been published under a ‘Creative Commons Licence’, which means you can reuse or copy it without needing permission to do so.

Creative commons

Around 1.6 billion works are available online as Creative Commons Licensed resources — ranging from literary works, to videos, photos, audio and academic research. If you limit your online searches to materials made available under the Creative Commons License, you will avoid falling into any copyright traps, as these can be reproduced and added to your Canvas courses without needing any further permissions.

Got a copyright question?

Checking that you have the right copyright approvals in place really isn’t as difficult as you think, and by working together we can ensure your Canvas courses are fully compliant. So if you have any queries, please email: licences@liverpool.ac.uk

Keywords: Canvas at Liverpool, Copyright, Multimedia .