educational institutions
Australia
Screenrights' Australian educational services allow educational institutions to copy from television and radio for educational purposes and to communicate those copies, provided the communication is to staff and students of the institution only. These services are provided for in the Australian Copyright Act.
All universities, TAFEs, government schools and almost all other schools are licensed by Screenrights to copy from radio and television. Vocational Education Training providers, ELICOS Colleges and other training institutions can also get a licence from Screenrights and make the most of television as a teaching resource.
Screenrights also licenses educational institutions to communicate copies they make (for example, by making copies available online to students).
Screenrights' appointment by the Government
Screenrights is a non-profit organisation appointed by the Australian Government to administer provisions in the Australian Copyright Act allowing educational institutions to copy from radio and television and to communicate those copies, provided they pay a fee.
Screenrights' role is to enter agreements with participating institutions, monitor their use of material and collect and distribute fees to the rightsholders in the programs that are identified as having been copied or communicated. This is done on a non-profit basis, with Screenrights deducting only its administrative overheads from the money it collects.
Because this appointment has been made by the Government, Screenrights must put its annual accounts before each House of Parliament and comply with other guidelines issued by the Attorney-General's Department.
Copying without a licence
Institutions that do not have a Screenrights licence and copy from television or radio may infringe copyright, unless they obtain prior permission from all the relevant rightsholders in the program. The practical impossibility of doing this led to the educational copying provisions being established in the first place.
Audiovisual material being copied
The following chart represents the breakdown of audiovisual material being copied by Australian and New Zealand educational institutions in 2007.
More information
The Great Outdoors, Seven Network (Operations) Ltd
"Because of the Screenrights licence, we have ready access to documentaries, movies and other programming for use in lectures, tutorials and to keep as an ongoing resource at the university."
- Liz Curach University Librarian UWS
