Please contact Hock-Thye Chan about our Coyright Policy.
hchan@auscampus.net
What can be copied
The Copyright Act has a section called "fair dealing". One part of this section relates to “fair dealing for research and study”. Under this section you may copy a "reasonable portion" of a work for your own research and study.
The Act says that a reasonable portion is 10% or one chapter of a book, or one article from any one issue of a journal. Pictures, animations, graphics and diagrams may be copied also. If the material you want to copy is in digital format, then you can copy one chapter, if the work is in chapters, or 10% of the number of words if it is not divided into chapters. Pictures, animations, graphics and diagrams in digital form may be copied also.
Research and study includes assessment, so you may include portions of works in your assignments, projects and theses, provided that you attribute the sources properly.
Fair dealing also applies to audiovisual items, “subject matter other than works”. It would be possible to make copies of reasonable portions of these things for research and study. What is a "reasonable portion" is not defined, so you need to be careful.
If you have bought some computer software, or you are a licensed user, the Copyright Act says that you may make a copy of the program for the purposes of backup, research and study, error correction, interoperability (making your program interact with other software) and security testing.
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Copyright types
The things that a person creates, such as essays, photographs, cartoons, stories, novels, term papers, paintings, maps, plays and musical scores are called "works".
There are:
- literary works (books, letters, articles, term papers, computer programs etc)
- dramatic works (plays, film scripts, scenarios)
- musical works (musical scores, music that is written down)
- artistic works (photos, paintings, drawings, animations, diagrams, etc)
Audiovisual items such as films and sound recordings, including music, are referred to as "subject matter other than works" or sometimes just "subject matter".
A computer program is designated a "literary work", and recorded music (CDs, MP3 files, tapes, records, etc) is classed with audiovisual items as "subject matter other than works".
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Downloading software, music or movies
The Music, Movie and Software Industry, the people who generally own the copyright in the songs, films and computer programs, are very keen to defend their property. There are many websites offering free downloads of music, movies and/or software, or offering downloads for a small fee, and most of these sites may not be offering legal copies.
Using KaZaa or other file-trading or peer-to-peer software to share any kind of copyrighted software, music or movie files is more and more attracting the attention of the software, music and movie industry and should not be used for this purpose.
Using ACN equipment to download music, movies, software, books etc for unauthorised purposes is a breach of the ACN Internet Code of Practice and policies and may lead to disciplinary action and suspension of access to computer facilities.
And, although you've probably been told otherwise, it is NOT legal to rip a CD or DVD. The fact that you own a CD, vinyl disc, an audio or video cassette or DVD does not automatically give you the right to make copies of it.
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