Displaying third-party owned materials in slides displayed in class is a common and accepted practice. This practice can be continued in full compliance with copyright law, in each of the following circumstances:
If the third party copyrighted material within your lecture slides qualifies as a “Short Excerpt”, as defined in the Fair Dealing Requirements for Faculty and Staff, or you have received the copyright owner’s permission (which may include an electronic resources license) , then you may post a copy of the lecture slides into UBC’s secure learning management system, provide physical copies to your students, or send digital copies via email.
However, some UBC electronic resource licenses restrict the making or dissemination of copies and limit fair dealing rights. Therefore, if a UBC digital license only grants specific, limited usage rights, and the Fair Dealing Requirements give more generous usage rights, the more limited terms of the UBC electronic resource licenses apply. You can view the terms of the license associated with particular electronic resources at UBC’s License Information page or contact copyright.services@ubc.ca for assistance to confirm whether the terms of the UBC electronic resource license allow this posting.
Please note that when considering the distribution of lecture slides, there is an important distinction between posting the slides to a publicly accessible website, and posting the slides to a website that is restricted to students enrolled in your course. UBC’s learning management systems (e.g. Canvas, Entrada, Connect, MEDICOL) are password protected, secure websites that are restricted to and accessible only by UBC students, and each student’s access is limited to the courses they are registered in. By contrast, most privately owned websites (e.g. YouTube) are publicly accessible, in the sense that anyone may visit it, not just your students. Posting lecture slides containing third party owned copyrighted works to a UBC learning management system is different and far less risky (from a copyright perspective), than posting the same slides on a publicly accessible website.
You may record a lecture, either as a video-recording or “voice-over PowerPoint,” and post the recording of the lecture onto UBC’s secure learning management system for your students to access. If the lecture contains images of third party owned copyrighted material, the use of that material must comply with copyright law.
If the amount of third party owned copyrighted material does not exceed a “Short Excerpt”, as defined in the Fair Dealing Requirements for Faculty and Staff, the fair dealing exception may be applied. Note, it is permissible to use the fair dealing exception to record a lecture for the purposes of delivering UBC courses online.
An alternative to this application of the general fair dealing right described above, is the specific exception for third party owned copyrighted material included in a recorded lesson. This is known as the Lesson Exception (see s. 30.01 of the Copyright Act).
For this exception to apply, the institution and the student must comply with several very important, and limiting conditions, most important of which being that the student and UBC must destroy all recordings of the lesson within 30 days after the day on which the students enrolled in the course have received their final course evaluation.
If you have questions or wish to utilize the Lesson Exception, please contact copyright.services@ubc.ca for more information.
If you are considering using third party owned copyrighted material in lecture slides, and you conclude that your use is not possible without the copyright owner’s permission, which cannot or is impractical for you to obtain, the following considerations may be helpful: