Students have special rights to use copyright material in assessments without permission. Outside the classroom, the law is different. To avoid legal problems and maintain your professionalism, it’s important to understand copyright.
This next section gives you general copyright information for the workplace. We will also go through a number of common information types and the rules around their use.
Online content is protected by copyright in the same way that physical items are. Whether or not you are able to use something depends on how you intend to use it and what rights the copyright owner grants to the public.
You can avoid getting into trouble by:
Linking and using embed code
Creating your own content
Adhering to licensing, permissions and terms of use
Using content that is out of copyright or where the copyright has been waived
Copyright is owned by the creator in the first instance, however, employment contracts tend to ensure that any works created by employees in the course of their tenure will be owned by the employer. This is also generally true for contracted hire situations. Additionally, employers may have different copyright or intellectual property policies that apply to different employees or different employment scenarios.
So it’s really important that you read and understand your employment contract. Be aware of your employer’s copyright or intellectual property policies and procedures, and how they affect you and your work.