Copyright for students

The Copyright Act contains several exceptions that allow you to use other people's work (third party copyright material) without infringing copyright, as long as it is deemed fair. These are called 'fair dealings'. The fair dealing provisions apply to very specific purposes, including:

• research or study
• criticism or review
• parody or satire
• reporting the news
• access by persons with a disability

It is important to note that while you can rely on the fair dealing for research or study to COPY third party copyright material, it does not extend to publishing or communicating the third party work publicly. For example, if you include third party copyright material in an assignment that you want to make public e.g. in an ePortfolio, or video that you want to upload to YouTube, you will likely need to get permission from the copyright owner first.

As an enrolled student, Flinders University provides you with free access to some third party copyright material for educational purposes. You may find some of this material on FLO e.g. lecture notes, assignment questions; or Readings e.g. scanned book chapter, link to a journal article in an electronic database. 

Some third party copyright material is provided to you under the conditions of the statutory licence contained under section 113P of the Copyright Act; or licences with commercial vendors e.g. publishers. 

Flinders University is the copyright owner of teaching material created by its staff members and includes (but not limited to) lecture notes, assignment questions, quizzes, exams and lecture recordings. 

All students are bound by the Flinders University Acceptable Use of Technology Procedures policy which prohibits them from transmitting material which infringes copyright. Third party copyright material that has been provided to you for educational purposes should not be redistributed to others, including third party document sharing sites e.g. StuDocu, Chegg, Course Hero.