Copyright

Copyright basics

Whenever you’re copying or sharing creative work, it's important to consider copyright. Get familiar with copyright and its relationship to your work or studies at Manchester Met.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Please note, the University does not control any of the third party websites referenced on this site, which are provided for your convenience only. Therefore, the University does not accept responsibility for the information provided on those third party websites.

Introduction

What does copyright protect?

Copyright is an ‘intellectual property right’ that gives the authors of original, creative works the right to decide who is allowed to copy and share their work and how.  

The types of work which qualify for copyright protection in the UK include books, journals, personal correspondence, software, music, art works, diagrams, databases audio recordings, films and broadcasts. 

How long does copyright last?

Copyright works are protected from the moment they are recorded in a “fixed” form, such as written down, recorded or stored in digital format. Works will then stay protected until the copyright expires, after which time they pass into the “public domain.”

In the UK copyright protection generally lasts:  

  • 70 years after the death of the creator (or the last of the creative team to die) for written, artistic, musical or dramatic works
  • 70 years from the date of creation or release for films and sound recordings

The UK Government pages offer more detailed advice copyright duration. If you have questions on specific works, ask us via [email protected].

What activities are covered?

The law grants certain “exclusive rights” to the copyright owner of a work. This means that: 

  • nobody else can use your copyright work in certain ways without your permission 
  • you need permission to use someone else’s work

All of the following activities are defined in copyright law as “restricted acts” which only the copyright owner or their representative has the right to authorise: 

  • copying 
  • issuing copies to the public (ie publishing and distributing physical copies of works) 
  • renting or lending 
  • publicly performing (ie showing, playing or performing copyright works in a public space) 
  • communicating to the public by means of electronic transmission (ie broadcast and online communication) 

  • adapting (eg making a film adaptation of a book) 

If you’re doing any of the above with a copyright work, you need to make sure that you either have a licence or that a copyright exception applies. 

How to find and use copyright-free resources

Search tools for finding free stuff

Here are some ways to find copyright-free content using Google and Creative Commons, followed by media-specific copyright-free websites for images, music, books & journals, and video.

Whilst there are many websites offering free-to-use content, it’s important to familiarise yourself with each site’s terms and conditions as they may differ according to your intended use of the material. Some material may be in the public domain, where copyright has expired or been waived by the creator.

For fairness, an attribution or acknowledgement of the creator should be included when using third party material (include title/author/source/licence details if possible). This is best academic practice even if the website says it’s not necessary.  

Google

Google can be used to find free material in a variety of mediums (music, images, video etc):

Filter your searches for content licenced for re-use by using Google Advanced Search. Enter your search terms in the boxes at the top, then scroll down to “usage rights”, select the type of licence under which you would like to find materials and select ”Advanced search”. Once you find a resource, it’s worth double-checking the licence on the host site too.

Google Scholar enables you to find articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions across a wide variety of disciplines and sources. You can also use advanced search options and save articles to your library. 

Creative Commons

Creative Commons offers an alternative to traditional copyright protection. It enables content creators to apply licences to their work, clearly indicating that it can be reused. 

By using Creative Commons licences, you retain copyright ownership while allowing others to copy and distribute your work, provided they give you credit and adhere to the specified conditions. 

The Creative Commons search portal allows you to search for materials that can be reused without requiring permission.

This video, ‘Introduction to Creative Commons Licenses,’ is by The University of Guelph McLaughlin Library, available  https://www.youtube.com/@UoGLibrary and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

If the content you want to share is covered by a Creative Commons licence you can upload it to Moodle. 

But if you’re creating a new copyright work based on existing Creative Commons works, you need to consider whether this is a derivative work and whether the licence permits this. 

Creative Commons (CC) licences are legal tools that help you grant copyright permissions to the general public. These tools include six different licences and one public domain dedication tool. It is important to specify which one of the 7 legal tools you are applying to your material when you’re publishing anything eg a journal article. The licence chooser on the CC website can help you decide which licence is right for you. 

CC licences may be applied to any type of copyrightable work. The only types of works for which CC does not recommend its licences are computer software and hardware, where they recommend a standard free software licence instead. For works that are already in the public domain they recommend that you mark them with the Public Domain Mark. If you hold the rights to a work but would like to place it into the public domain, you can use the Chooser to select CC0. 

Websites offering copyright-free stuff

  • Images

    Here’s a list of sites offering free-to-use images. Many of them are Creative Commons licenced and some material may be in the public domain, where copyright has expired or been waived by the creator. As a general rule you should always acknowledge/attribute the creator of any material you reuse as best academic practice. Remember to check the terms of use for any image you find, as these will vary. 

    If you have any questions about finding or using free images online then email us at [email protected]  

    • Creative Commons allows you to search across multiple sources for material labelled for re-use under a CC licence
    • Wikimedia Commons is a media repository which hosts images, sound and video clips under a number of open licences
    • Everystockphoto searches millions of freely licensed photos, from various sources and presents them in an integrated search.
    • Flickr. Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of licence.
    • Unsplash. All images on Unsplash can be downloaded and used for personal or commercial projects.
    • VADS has over 140,000 images from 300 art and design collections in the UK, free to use for education. Read VADS’ FAQs for full details of what you can & cannot do with these resources
    • TinEye labs is a colour-based image search engine where you can search for Creative Commons images by colour (up to five colours at once) and key words. It’s fun to use.
    • The Noun Project has over 500 million icons and pictures, many under Creative Commons licences, but you have to create a free account to use them. Make sure you’ve read Noun Project’s terms of use.
    • Europeana gives you access to millions of items from institutions across Europe. Discover artworks, books, music, and videos on art, newspapers, archaeology, fashion, science, sport, and much more. View the ‘rights statement’ in the bottom left corner below the media to know if and how you can use the item. The link will open a website in a new tab, giving you a full breakdown of the conditions for use.

  • Music
    • Open Music Archive is a collaborative project initiated by artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White.  These recordings are distributed freely and form a site of exchange. The archive serves as a vehicle for future collaborations and distributed projects. 
    • Free Music Public Domain offers a variety of royalty-free music for different uses, including home videos, YouTube, films, commercials, or personal use. Includes genres like Jazz, Classical, Dance, New Age, Rock, Blues, and more. 
    • MUSOPEN is a collection of royalty-free and copyright-free classical music, suitable for various projects like YouTube videos, films, and video games. Users can browse music by composer, performer, instrument, tag, form, or time period. Specific restrictions and licensing details are available by clicking the licence icon. Read the FAQs. 
    • Mobygratis: Moby (the musician) has created this resource for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short. He’s created a selection of over 200 tracks, some unreleased, some from his back catalogue and new releases, available to licence for free via a simple online application system. Once you have found the right piece, select the download icon and fill in a simple application telling him a bit about yourself and the way you are using the music. You will receive a high quality AIFF download via email instantly to use in your edit, along with a copy of the mobygratis Non Commercial Licence Agreement. 
    • FreePD: free to use, whether for commercial use or not, on a Creative Commons CC0 licence.  
    • CCMixter: music here is available for free non-commercial use with attribution. Some tracks can be used commercially with proper credit. Users can find music for videos, apps, games, and podcasts, with clear guidelines on how to attribute the music. 
    • UDIO is an AI music generator. You can generate a song either by adding text or your own audio to start the process. Material that’s under copyright shouldn’t be used, read the terms of service for details. You will need to create an account.  
    • SUNO is an AI music creation platform that allows users to generate songs easily. Read the ownership and copyright FAQ. The free version of Suno enables the app to retain copyright in the generated content. Ownership and rights are retained by the author in any original content input into Suno. You will need to create an account. 

  • Books and journals

    Open Educational Resources (OERs) for teaching  

    OERs are learning materials of all types which can be used and reused freely by tutors. A compilation of links and information about OERs is available at  OER Handbook wiki . Materials are also available in the OER Commons, and the Creative Commons website also provides information on Education / OER resources .  

    Open Access 

    Open Access (OA) refers to scholarly works that are freely accessible online in digital format, without cost to the reader and with minimal restrictions on reuse. Below, you’ll find a list of resources to help you discover and utilise OA materials for research and teaching. 

    OA journal articles 
    • The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. The database contains thousands of fully open access, peer reviewed scholarly journals growing daily. The DOAJ can also be used to identify which journals would be most suitable for your publications. 
    • OAIster is a discovery tool that searches a union catalogue of records representing OA resources.  
    Social Sciences  
    • JSTOR has a constantly expanding collection of journals that cover topical areas in sustainability and security studies, and offer broad coverage in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. 
    • Social Science Research Network provides content in the social sciences. 
    Science  
    • PubMed Central is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). 
    • Encyclopedia of Life is an open access, multimedia resource for natural history and biodiversity. 
    • ArXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. 
    Economics
    Business & Law
    Art & Design
    • IDA: International Design and Art Journal is an international refereed journal. It is a non-profit journal that does not charge article submission charges (ASCs), or article processing charges (APCs). 
    • The Chitrolekha Journal on Art and Design is an open-access scholarly platform for discussions on the evolution and intersectional development of art and design. 
    • Journal of Art, Design and Music (JADM) is a peer-reviewed bi-annual journal covering all sub-disciplines of Art, Design & Music. 
    • Open Arts Journal  is a rigorously compiled, peer-reviewed platform for arts scholarship open to diverse participants & including practitioners and historians of art, architecture and design, curators and arts policy-makers, and researchers in the arts and heritage sectors. 

    OA repositories 

    • OpenDOAR is the quality-assured, global Directory of Open Access Repositories. They host repositories that provide free, open access to academic outputs and resources.  
    • CORE (COnnecting REpositories) provides a comprehensive bibliographic database of the world’s scholarly literature, collecting and indexing research from repositories and journals. 
    • As mentioned above, both Google Scholar and Creative Commons can be used to find OA licenced material for reuse.  

    OA books 

    • JSTOR provides access to over 11,000 books from a number of publishers.  
    • Hathi Trust   is a digital library that contains millions of digitised books and publications.  
    • Google Books provides free full-text access to many items in the collection. Be aware that in-copyright items are preview-only. 

  • Videos
    • Vimeo offers videos on a range of Creative Commons. For free to reuse material, the filters can help you to search for content. Account needed.  
    • British Film Institute (BFI) has thousands of titles digitised from the archive and available for streaming. 

Collective licences

The university holds a number of collective licences which permit the sharing and copying of different types of copyright works:

  • For making and sharing copies of journal articles and book chapters: the CLA licence

    Students and staff can make copies of up to one chapter from a book/ one article from a journal or magazine issue, OR 10% of the book or journal/magazine issue (whichever is the greater)*. The making of digitised copies for teaching must be carried out by the Library’s digitisation team, who will provide you with a link to the scan for your reading list / Moodle: please request via our Digitisation page. 

    *Since 1 August 2024 the CLA licence has been amended. Copying extents for journals has increased to two articles per issue (or 10%, whichever is the greater), or up to a whole issue if it is devoted to a particular theme.  

    Content can be shared with other UK Higher Education staff or students during collaborative research projects. 
      
    For books, we can copy either one book chapter or up to 10% of the book (whichever is the greater), per unit.

    Once an extract has been chosen, it’s not possible to swap it for a different extract from the same publication during that academic year as that would exceed the limits of the licence.

  • For recording and showing a recording from Box of Broadcasts (BoB): the ERA licence

    Recordings from UK TV and radio broadcasts (provided by Box of Broadcasts (BoB)) to be used for educational purposes with others within the university.  

    Use your Manchester Met account to log in to BoB.

    BoB offers a database of recent broadcasts and listings of future broadcasts. You can select items of interest and store them on your account. Tutors can set up playlists and share them with students. You can also link to content in BoB from Manchester Met reading lists. 

    Unfortunately, BoB isn’t generally available to students located overseas as the ERA Licence is only valid in the UK. Have a look at their FAQs for further information.

  • For copying and sharing a newspaper article in the classroom or VLE: the NLA licence

    The NLA licence permits the photocopying and scanning of newspaper articles of all national newspapers and around 80% of local newspapers for the purposes of internal management, education and instruction. 

    The NLA licence allows: 

    • photocopying of up to 250 copies of any article of any newspaper included in the NLA licence for the purposes of education, instruction and internal management 

    • digital scanning of cuttings, for the circulation by email or other electronic means from most NLA newspapers but there are exceptions 

    The NLA licence does not allow: 

    • the copying of advertisements, images, illustrations or photographs which may appear alongside an article 

    • the copying and circulation of cuttings from NLA newspapers outside of the licensed premises 

    • the copying of the whole of any newspaper  

    • newspapers excluded from the NLA newspaper list 

  • For playing music or doing a live performance on campus: the PRS for Music / PPL licences

    The PRS licence is for the public performance of musical works and allows the performance of live music on University premises in the following circumstances: 

    • solely as a required part of fulfilling a recognised and official qualification, without a charge for entry 

    • if the syllabus requires the event to charge for admission, evidence of the syllabus must be provided

    • The PPL licence - for the playing and performance of commercial music (restricted to designated areas within the University)

For showing a film in public for leisure / non-educational purposes, the University does not hold a collective licence. Please check this FAQ for further information: Which licence do I need to show a film at Manchester Met.

Who owns the copyright on my work?

You generally own the copyright in any piece of original work you create. If you create copyright material whilst working with other people, you’ll share the copyright between you. 

An exception to this is when you create a piece of work as part of your job, then it is likely that the copyright is owned by your employer.

Also, if you’re a researcher who receives sponsorship, your sponsor may have a stake in your work.

For full details, check the page relevant to you: