Having blogged about the fair dealing exception for copying for the purposes of instruction (updated Section 32 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), it may seem confusing to introduce yet another exception for “Copying of extracts by educational establishments”, but there it is, the revised CDPA, Section 36. The distinctive features are:

• No fair dealing test, defined limits instead, namely a maximum of 5% of a given work in any 12 months period for each institution.
• Must be for instruction “for a non-commercial purpose”
• Can only be used when there is no licence available to cover our use of the work in question.

Particular advantages:

• We are explicitly permitted to upload the extracts onto a VLE (such as Moodle) by this exception, including remote access for UCL students not on the premises.
• Covers any copyright work apart from broadcasts and stand-alone artistic works (such as photographs and paintings)
• Offers an opening to use a work which is not covered by a licence. Examples would be a book which is excluded from the CLA licence by the publisher or an extract from any film, since there is currently no blanket licence available which would cover that usage.

This is an exception to be used with caution. In particular there may be difficulties in monitoring the limitation of 5% of a work in any 12 month period. In specific circumstances however it could prove very useful.  Extracts would be best added to an online reading list, using the Library’s Course readings service.