Copyright for students

All creative works such as books, art, photos, music and film are all automatically protected by copyright when written down, recorded or saved, whether online or in a physical format. The copyright owner has the right to decide what you’re allowed to do with that work. You should make sure your use of copyright works is legal.If someone believes you’ve infringed their copyright by using their work unfairly and without permission, they may take legal action against you. For more information on legal use of others work have a look at our referencing webpages.  

Most of the books, journals, databases and software you use in your studies are protected by copyright. With the help of your tuition fees, we buy licences that permit us to provide you with the resources you need. These licences allow you to access these resources for your studies, but don’t allow you to share them with others online. If you want to use these ideas, pictures or words in your assignments have a look at our referencing webpages to find out more.

You might want to copy or share works that are not covered by a licence paid for by the University. In some cases, you’ll need permission from the copyright holder. For example, if you want to show a film to a public audience in a non-educational setting, you need to get permission from an organisation such as Filmbank. In other situations, your activity may be covered by copyright exceptions even if we don’t have a licence. Contact us if you want to find out more.

There are exceptions to copyright that allow you to make copies of copyright works and use them for your personal study (in coursework, essays and other projects) without a licence. For example, you may need to:

• quote some text from an article or book in an assignment or incorporate film clips into a video essay
• make copies or adapt works if you have a disability

You always need to make sure that your use of copyright material is fair to the copyright owner and you must credit the author or producers of any works you’re using or quoting from.

If you have a question about how to use the copyrighted works of other people in a fair and legal way, we can help, email us at [email protected] or ask us via Chat.

Many copyright exceptions mention the importance of fair dealing. This means you need to consider whether your use of someone else’s work is fair, for example:  

• using it in a way that stops them from selling the work
• making use of it in the way they want to
• using more of the work than you need to for your purpose.

Deciding on whether something is fair will always vary depending on the nature of the use—contact us for advice.  

You own the copyright in the original academic work you create at Manchester Met, unless there is an alternative agreement in place such as a sponsorship agreement or studentship agreement.

Your copyright ownership includes your personal lecture notes, essays and examination responses in any form. If you create copyright material whilst working together with other people, you’ll share the copyright ownership between you.

We have a special guide to help you with this which covers referencing and how to acknowledge the work of others in your own assignments.

No, these are different things - but both are bad practice and to be avoided.

• Plagiarism is when you copy someone’s work and pass it off as your own, even if you don’t copy their exact words or the way they’ve expressed themselves creatively.
• Copyright infringement means copying or sharing someone else’s creative work without their permission, even if you’re not pretending it’s your own work. Like making a copy of DVD for a friend for example.

Using peer-to-peer software or websites to share files puts you at risk of copyright infringement.

Manchester Met owns the copyright on all course materials supplied by your tutors so these should not be shared online.

Work you submit for assessment must be your own original work. In short, that means don’t plagiarise someone else’s work by copying it and pretending that it’s yours. We don’t need to tell you that essay mills are also wrong but that’s a similar thing.