by The Open University
Available in 48 free installments
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An original piece of work, whether it is text, music, pictures, sound recordings, web pages, etc., is protected by copyright law and may often have an accompanying symbol (©) and/or legal statement. In the UK it is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 which regulates this.
In most circumstances, works protected by copyright can be used in whole or in part only with the permission of the owner. In some cases this permission results in a fee.
However, the UK legislation includes a number of exceptions known as ‘fair dealing?. Fair dealing allows the free use of part of a published work for non-commercial research or private study, for criticism or review purposes, or for reporting current events. The source must always be quoted, so make sure you get all the details when you take a photocopy, or print from a web page so you can acknowledge where you got it from.
If you would like to read a bit more about Copyright and what is permitted, have a look at the Copyright site on the information Skills for researchers page
To find out about copyright in other countries you might like to check out the International Federation of Reproductive Rights Organizations website. This is an international membership organisation, and if you follow the link to their membership page then you will see a list of international copyright organisations.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence
