June 16, 2025, by Laura Nicholson

Copyright. Are you on the right side of the law?

A big thank you to our guest author, Simon Barnett—Video Production Support Officer on the Learning Content Team—for offering some excellent advice on how to stay compliant with copyright regulations.

As we reach the final stretch of the academic year, now is a great time to begin reviewing the content of your teaching materials, particularly when it comes to the copyright of material.

Media content, particularly video content, can be an invaluable asset in the teaching toolkit, offering students engaging and dynamic ways to connect with complex subject matter.

In this digital age of information, the widespread availability and ease of sharing material online can create significant copyright challenges for staff who can find just what they want and share it easily, think uploads to YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud and the like – some of the material uploaded to these sites may have been done so where permission may not exist for reuse.

Materials you find online may have been uploaded without proper permissions, e.g. end users uploading television programmes, in part or in whole to a video sharing platform. By reusing them, you are likely to inadvertently breach copyright regulations and increase the likelihood of discovery by redistributing them to new audiences via a lecture recording or as a link in Moodle.

Learning on Screen (formerly known as the British Universities Film and Video Council) has published a blog post on LinkedIn that talks about copyright in teaching materials, it is well worth taking a few minutes to read the post and understand what you can do to ensure you remain on the right side of copyright law.

Top tips

Learning on Screen lists 5 things you can do right now to protect yourself, your students and the university, they are;

1. Ask the Learning Content Team about the ERA Plus licence | The university pays for this licence which will unlock a lot of content you might not realise is already cleared.
2. Use your Box of Broadcasts account | All content on Box of Broadcasts (BoB) has been cleared so it’s the safest ways to use broadcast content. Our Box of Broadcasts platform provides millions of copyright compliant film, television and radio programmes for use in education. You can sign in to BoB with your university credentials.
3. Avoid embedding YouTube content unless you’ve checked the rights | Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s legal to use. There is so much content that has been illegally uploaded to YouTube.
4. Review your lecture recordings before uploading | Always do a quick check through with your copyright “hat” on, especially if they contain third-party images, video or music.
5. Don’t reuse slides blindly | Make sure you double check older resources or hand-me-downs. They may have copyright ghosts lurking inside.

There can be serious consequences for non-compliance when it comes to copyright, while ‘crit and review’ may be argued as a defence in some cases, and be valid, it is down to you as the module or course convenor to make sure your teaching materials comply with copyright laws.

Further support

If you need to discuss the copyright of your material and how you can make it safe, then email the Learning Content Team within Learning Technologies or speak to your Faculty Learning Technology Consultant or Learning Technology Officer (Internal UoN SharePoint link).

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