Copyright basics

What is copyright?

Copyright is an intellectual property right which protects the original expression of an idea or information by a human creator in a physical or material form – such as being written down, painted or recorded. It does not protect the idea or information itself.

In Australia copyright applies automatically as soon as a work is in material form. It does not require registration.

Copyright in Australia is governed by the Copyright Act 1968. This act outlines the rights of copyright owners, and details how copyright material can be used.

Rights of copyright owners

Under the Copyright Act 1968, copyright owners have exclusive rights over their material.

Economic rights

• Reproduce the material – photocopy, scan, download and save.
• Publish – publish it on the internet or in print form, put it on a cover of a magazine, install in a public place or release the song.
• Communicate the material to the public– send it out to the public, allow public viewing on the internet or distribute a print book.
• Broadcast – broadcast the material using traditional broadcasting techniques.
• Perform – sing, put on a public performance, act it out, recite.
• Make adaptations of the material – translate to different languages, turn it into something else like a book to a TV show.

To use copyright material in a way that is covered by any of these rights, you must get permission from the copyright owner unless your use is covered by a licence or a fair dealing exception in the Copyright Act.

Moral rights

The Copyright Act also grants authors and creators moral rights to their work, whether they own the economic rights or not.

• To be acknowledged or attributed as the creator of your material.
• To not have any copyright material falsely attributed to you, or to have another person/entity falsely credited as the creator of your work.
• To ensure the integrity of your work and protect against derogatory treatment that could be harmful or prejudicial to your reputation.

These moral rights always belong to the creator even if they have sold or rented any of the economic rights, or if their employer owns the economic rights.

Type of material protected

The type of material that is protected is identified in the Copyright Act 1968 under 2 categories – original works and subject matter other than works.

Original works

Original material is divided into 4 sub-categories:

• Literary – text-based materials such as books, emails, journals, magazines, text websites, software code, poems, newspapers, data forms, song lyrics, policy and procedure documents. Computer software, including desktop applications, video games and mobile apps, and compilations such as databases, catalogues or directories are also protected as literary works.
• Artistic – visual based material such as paintings, engravings, blueprints, models, photos, sculptures, digital images, graphic art, memes, maps, plans.
• Musical – musical scores.
• Dramatic – documented human movement activities such as choreography, scripts, circus, theatrical production.

Subject matter other than works

• Sound recordings – audio based materials such as recorded music, audio books, audio interviews, podcasts.
• Film – audiovisual based materials such as TV shows, online videos, movies, streaming, YouTube clips, Vimeo clips, advertisements.
• Broadcasts (television and radio) – the version that is broadcast on traditional broadcasting technology.
• Published edition – the version that is published to the market such as traditional books, journals, magazines, compact discs, DVDs, placed on a website, streamed.

Ownership of copyright

In the first instance copyright is generally owned by the creator of the material, although there are some recognised exceptions.

• If material is created during employment, the employer owns the economic rights to the material. For example, ACU owns the copyright of materials created by staff for teaching purposes.
• Contractual agreements to create material may include who will own the copyright of the material. For example, a research funding agreement may stipulate that the funding organisation owns all economic rights.
• If a person or company commissions a work to be done for them, then the contract may state that they own the economic rights to the work, subject to negotiated conditions of use with the creator.
• Creators can give away, sell (assign) or rent (license) some or all their economic rights to a person or company. For example, an author could sell the movie adaptation right of their book to a film company, a researcher could give away their publishing rights for a journal to publish their article.

ACU staff should check the Intellectual Property Policy for any clarification around what ACU as an employer owns.

Length of copyright

• If you can identify the creator of original works: copyright protection lasts for the duration of the creator’s life plus 70 years. In the case of material with multiple authors or creators, copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the last remaining author or creator.
• If you cannot identify the creator of original works: copyright lasts for 70 years from the year of publication or creation date.
• The copyright of films and sound recordings lasts for 70 years from year of creation.
• The copyright of television and radio broadcasts lasts for 50 years from first broadcast year.
• Materials produced by Government departments are protected by copyright for 50 years from date of first publication.
• A published edition’s copyright lasts for 25 years from year released to market.

Copyright cannot be renewed and once it has expired material enters the public domain and can be used by anybody for any purpose.

Key terms and phrases

All Rights Reserved

A term used on copyright material to indicate that the copyright owner or publisher has chosen to maintain and enforce all their economic and moral rights under copyright law. These rights are defined in the Copyright Act 1968, and can be bought, sold or licensed.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons [CC] is a licensing system that provides a way for creators, companies and institutions to share their work with others on flexible terms without infringing copyright. The licences allow users to reuse, remix and share the content legally. Check the Creative Commons website for detailed information. ACU encourages the use of CC material at ACU. ACU staff should check the Copyright Use of Third-Party Works Procedure for clarification.

Offering work under a Creative Commons licence does not mean giving up copyright. It means permitting users to make use of works material in various ways, but only on certain conditions. ACU encourages the use of the CC licences for ACU copyright owned material where appropriate, see the Intellectual Property Policy for clarification.

• Students and researchers – Creative Commons enables you to use more than the limits under fair dealing for research and study. It also allows other uses like placing on the internet.
• Teachers – using Creative Commons material allows you to use more than the limits set under the CA 113P statutory licence.

Licensed material

As an educational institution, ACU purchases a range of material to use for educational purposes, for example the library purchases databases or online videos.

These must be used within the terms of the licence. Licensed materials must not be used in artificial intelligence (AI) tools unless the licence terms give explicit permission for AI use.

Check with your Faculty or the Library for terms of use.

Public domain

A term used for creative material where there is no ownership, and no economic or moral rights attributed to the material. There are a number of reasons why creative material is in the public domain.

• When the length of copyright on the material has expired.
• An organisation/creator can declare their work into the public domain, USA federal government for example.
• AI generated works are considered public domain works as copyright only protects human-created works.

There is no legal requirement to provide attribution of public domain material. However, providing attribution is best practice.

Third-party material

A term used generically to identify any copyright materials that were not created by the individual or a company that an individual works for.