Copying from websites
Copying web materials, social media and YouTube
Text, images, databases and other information on the web are covered by copyright law even where they are freely available to the public.
For materials on the web in general, it may be permissible to print a copy for your own private study and research under fair dealing provisions in copyright law, provided it is non-commercial. You must make your own informed decision on whether your copying is fair. It would be illegal to do the following without permission from the copyright owner:
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make multiple copies for students
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cut and paste text or images on the Internet and put them into your e-learning module, presentations or on your website.
Unfortunately there is no licensing scheme covering all web materials for teaching purposes. A small number of websites may be licensed under the University's Higher Education Copyright Licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency, which primarily licenses the use of content from books, journals and magazines in their repertoire. With subscription websites, you must check the terms and conditions of use prior to copying, or whether any statutory exceptions to copyright may apply.
The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) issued a Copyright Notice on digital images, photographs and the internet in March 2014 which is useful for bloggers and other social media users, as well anyone who uses or creates website content.
See also our own guidance on using content from YouTube in the Library FAQs, here.
Copying your own published work to websites
Any material which you write or images which you create and put on the web are protected under UK copyright law. However, do not assume that you may automatically post articles or books you have written online, as you may not hold all the rights you need to do so.
First, check whether you own the copyright of all the material including any images and the typographical arrangement. If a work is published, you may have already given away your author's rights to your publisher when you submitted your manuscript and entered into a publishing agreement.You may need rights clearance for any material which is not fair dealing, such as substantial reproduction of third party material which may affect the market for a work. It is generally expected that quotations will not generally need permission, but an image, which usually involves reproducing the whole image, rather than part, may need permission, especially if this affects the market for the image.
Many publishers put in place policies for authors which indicate what they can do with their published work, especially as many institutions and funders require all research to be made open access. and will detail these on their websites in their guidance for authors. A summary of publisher copyright and archiving policies for journal articles are brought together in the Sherpa-RoMEO database.
If in doubt, check the publisher's website and guidance for authors. If you are sure you are cleared to post the material online, you must then check that the format you wish to make it available in is permitted by the publisher, e.g. some publishers may object to the use of a publisher PDF article on a personal website or e-learning module, but may permit use of the author's own version in HTML format. The typographical layout of a work may also be copyright protected.
You can search for and view a summary of the copyright policies and permissions of many publishers online on the SHERPA-RoMEO website. Please note that these policies may not apply to all cases, for instance where you have negotiated a non-standard contract. Alternatively, you may contact your publisher directly to request permission.