Copyright and Licensing

Whether you are making your OurDMU site open or private, you need to think about copyright. The Library has excellent guides to copyright. Please familiarise yourself with these. Make sure that you own the copyright over the material that you ‘post’ or create on the site, or that you have the right/permission to re-use material.

All web based material is the copyright of someone or some entity, although rights to use such material for certain purposes may have been assigned under schemes such as Creative Commons’ licenses. Staff and students should take care to ensure that content taken or used from other websites does not infringe copyright. For further advice contact the University Copyright Officer. Content created and posted by students and staff will also have intellectual property rights and it is important that such content is also appropriately protected and addressed. You may find the application of a Creative Commons license helpful in this respect.

If students/other staff are to be involved, it is essential that they are clear about their participation, and whether they need to be enrolled as authors or editors or commenters or subscribers. You can do this by providing a briefing, or in written information on your site. Focus upon:

whether this will be an public/private site and what that means for their involvement/data/copyright;
that they are personally responsible and legally liable for any material they post on the site. See About OurDMU – Guidelines;
the information will be viewable on the internet, and the risks involved in disclosing personal information to both a broader audience;
any potential risks to intellectual property;
how they can back up or export their work, and how often they should do this;
that they are responsible for all work and material provided under their own login details;
that they will be held responsible for posting material that brings the institution/themselves into disrepute or that causes offence.