Using media in student work

Students who create works—video, audio, text, and so forth—for class assignments or on educational premises retain their copyright unless they have entered into a Sponsorship Agreement, made substantial use of the University’s facilities, or had the “inventive contribution” of a faculty or other staff member. For more, see Concordia's Policy on Intellectual Property.

When copying, downloading, translating, performing, and distributing the works of others, students should be aware of how the do’s and don’ts below apply to various media. Students should know that education exceptions are likely to apply to assignments as long as they are not made available on the open web and should proceed with additional caution when publicly distributing and posting works.

Students should not post or distribute course materials such as slides created by their instructors without permission, as the instructors usually own copyright in these materials.

Examples in different media

Text in textbooks

A textbook obtained from a site that pirates textbooks is copyright infringement. If your required textbook is cost prohibitive, you might consider used textbooks, renting textbooks, the Library’s course reserves collection, legally available instructional videos and resources found online, supplemental resources found in the library and open textbooks.

Videos

When using clips in your own work consider whether fair dealing applies, whether the clip is an insubstantial part of the work, whether you are engaging in non-commercial user-generated content (s. 29.21) and check the terms of use.

You may stream YouTube videos in or out of the classroom. Acknowledge the creator and title and include the original source. Before posting your own content, make sure that you are the copyright owner, have permission, or that an exception applies. See: YouTube Frequently Asked Copyright Questions.

Also, be aware that most online content will have a use agreement of some kind. For example, the subscription streaming service Netflix is primarily for personal use (not classroom use), except for a few titles that are marked for educational screenings (according to the terms of service). Streaming your favourite Netflix show in class will likely be a copyright infringement.

Audio

Unless a copyright exception applies, such as non-commercial user-generated content (s. 29.21), using, sampling, or remixing musical and non-musical clips in your own work generally requires copyright clearance from the copyright holders. For musical recordings, contact the Canadian Musical Reproductive Rights Agency.

Like other media, seek out terms of use. Unlike music typically found on YouTube, the use of iTunes audio in the classroom would typically be a copyright infringement because your personal account involves a subscription to a service for private use only.

Images

When using images for student papers, know that fair dealing (s. 29.1) allows you to make copies of copyright-protected images for the purposes of research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, and review. Remember that images on the internet are subject to copyright, which is why it is important to verify the terms of use for specifics on what is permitted if you were to distribute your work on the open web.

Open content

Do you need help finding openly licensed and public domain video, audio, and images to be used or remixed into your work? The OER guide has several sites to help you find Creative Commons and public domain images, video, and more. Make sure to read the terms of the open licence and review what the public domain means. See: Open Educational Resources.

Page last reviewed on: 2023-10-18