Fair dealing

The Copyright Act 1968 allows for limited amounts of copyright material to be copied without permission only if your use is covered by one of the ‘fair dealing’ provisions.

Fair dealing provisions

• Research or study
• Criticism or review
• Parody or satire
• Reporting the news
• Access by or for persons with a disability
• Judicial proceedings or providing professional legal advice

Fair dealing for research or study

The fair dealing for research or study is the one that will usually be relied upon for your studies at ACU. There is information about the other fair dealings below at More about fair dealings.

Under the fair dealing for research or study, a limited amount or ‘reasonable portion’ of copyright materials can be copied for personal study only. This can be both formal study or self-directed study. Copyright material used under this provision cannot be placed on the public internet or included in any work that will be published on the internet.

• Students – Copyright materials copied under fair dealing can be included in a class or assessment task so long as the material is referenced appropriately, and the assessment task is not made available on the public internet.
• Teachers – Copyright materials can be copied within prescribed limits for your personal use, but fair dealing does not cover the copying of copyright materials for communicating to students. Educational use of copyright materials in courses is covered by the CA 113P statutory licence.
• Researchers – Copyright materials can be copied within prescribed limits for your personal use, but fair dealing does not allow you to include content from the materials in your published thesis, article, book or conference paper. Permission will need to be sought from the copyright owner to do this. See Getting permission for more information.

How much can you copy under fair dealing?

Under fair dealing you can copy a ‘reasonable portion’ of the copyright material. There are two ways to work out what is a reasonable portion.

Firstly, for text-based copyright material, prescribed or set amounts apply that can easily be calculated.

• 10% of the number of pages in the work.
• One chapter (if it’s divided into chapters), either printed or electronic.
• One article from a newspaper, magazine or journal (or more than one from the same publication if it is related to the same topic).
• 10% of the number of words in electronic material with no page numbers.

Secondly, for non-text-based copyright material (photos, images, film, sound recordings) there is no prescribed amount. For this, or to use more than the prescribed amounts of text-based material, the following factors need to be considered:

• the purpose of the copying
• the nature of the work (type of material)
• the possibility of obtaining the work within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price
• the effect of the copying upon the potential market for, or value of, the work
• the amount and substantiality of the part copied in relation to the whole.

Examples of amounts that would be considered fair for non-text material:

• Small amount of music to illustrate a technique, or an image to demonstrate a skill, or a diagram to show where parts go together.
• A whole image or diagram, 30 seconds of a piece of music, a minute of a film.

Fair dealing obligations

As part of using copyright material under any of the fair dealing exceptions, the obligation is always to correctly reference where the material came from. This can be done in several ways such as a:

• citation list or bibliography
• credits list at the end of a video
• verbal thanks at the end of a recital or music program
• reference slide at the end of a PowerPoint presentation
• clickable link under the image.

For citation lists and bibliographies, the Library’s Referencing guide can assist you with the different referencing styles used at ACU.

More about fair dealings

There may also be cases where a fair dealing apart from research or study would be more applicable to your use of copyright materials, notably in the case for allowing persons with a disability to access resources. Below is a summary of the other five purposes.

Criticism or review

A reasonable portion of the material can be included in the critique or review for illustrative purposes, so long as there is sufficient acknowledgement of the work. The purpose of criticism or review must be genuine, and not to make a profit or to divert customers from a competitor.

Parody or satire

The terms parody and satire are not defined in the Copyright Act, but courts are likely to consider the definitions of ‘parody’ and ‘satire’ as:

• Parody is where material is imitated or evoked in a humorous way yet with such revision and alteration as to produce an original material.
• Satire is a form of ironic, sarcastic, scornful, derisive or ridiculing criticism of vice, folly or abuse, but not by way of an imitation or take-off.

Reporting news

A reasonable portion can be included for reporting news in a newspaper, magazine (or similar periodical) or film, or by means of a broadcast. News is not restricted to current events or breaking news.

Access by or for persons with a disability

This implements Australia’s obligations under the Marrakesh Treaty. These are:

• a fair dealing exception for the purpose of giving one or more people with a disability access to the material (section 113E) and
• an exception allowing certain organisations to use material for the purpose of assisting people with a disability to access material in their required format (section 113F).

An individual with a disability, or an organisation supporting them, can convert all types of copyright material into a format that ensures equitable access to that material. For this purpose, a relevant disability is one that causes difficulty in reading, viewing, hearing or comprehending copyright material in a particular form.

Contact ACU’s Access and Disability Service for more information or assistance.

Judicial proceedings or providing professional legal advice

A lawyer, patent attorney or trademark attorney can copy materials to assist their legal matters and in legal proceedings.

Contact us

For any questions or assistance with what can be copied under fair dealing, contact copyright.officer@acu.edu.au.