Films, sound recordings and off air broadcasts

The existence and duration of copyright in films and sound recordings is discussed on previous pages. Additionally it may be possible to copy the films and sound recordings (without infringing copyright) by relying on a fair dealing exception and complying with the requisite conditions of that exception. For example, a lecturer can copy a film (which has been made available to the public) for the purposes of giving criticism and review of the film in a lecture to students, provided a suitable acknowledgment is given.

If a film or sound recording is broadcast then it can probably be copied (including digitisation) under the terms of the Educational Recording Agency (ERA) Licence.

GCU holds a licence with the Educational Recording Agency (ERA) which permits the recording of most television and radio programmes for educational purposes. Recordings can be made through the Audio Visual Service, or by members of staff at home. Please see Audio-Visual Service for more details. These recordings can be kept in departments or deposited in the library.

Recordings must be carried out in accordance with the terms of the ERA Licence which specifies:

• They must be for the non-commercial educational purposes
• They must not be edited or modified (although extracts may be recorded)
• They must be marked with the date of the recording, the title of the recording, the name of the broadcaster, and the following statement: 'This recording is to be used only under the terms of the ERA Licence'

In addition copies of a broadcast recording may be made but not sold commercially and the details of any recordings made must be kept by the relevant department. Programmes made by the Open University are not covered by the ERA Licence.

Recordings made under the ERA Licence may be shown to registered students within the premises of an educational establishment. This means that recordings made under the ERA Licence can be digitised and accessed via GCULearn, providing access is restricted to the campus.

Please note that the ERA Licence only covers recordings made from broadcast TV and radio and not on-demand / catch up TV services such as the BBC iPlayer. You may include links from GCULearn to on-demand TV or radio, provided this is permitted by the terms of use of the service.

The GCU Digital Development team

The Digital Development team covers three main areas of service:

• The Spoken Word project has a partnership agreement with the BBC which allows us to make audio and video from their archives available for educational use. The archives are a unique repository of UK history and culture, stretching back to 1937. There are over 1million items in the archives, ranging from Leonard Cheshire’s eyewitness account of the Nagasaki atomic bomb to Boy George’s frank discussion of his own heroin addiction. Up to now the archives have been largely inaccessible, but this is changing.
• Digital encoding, curation, access and preservation of other audiovisual materials. Web access also includes provision of tools to embed timed media in other web environments, including GCU Learn. Our focus is on bringing spoken word audio and video into the classroom for learning and teaching. Teachers in our community of practice build collections based on their teaching and research interests. We currently have several hundred hours of audio/video available for educational use. We have an increasing amount of non-BBC content available, including audio recordings from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health events and Glasgow Caledonian University Archives Witness Seminars.
• GCU Store - our repository development supporting a wider range of learning and teaching materials. 

How can I use the resources?

• Go to our web site
• click ‘Find Audio and Video‘
• sign up for an educational user account
• start searching!

If you want to get involved, please visit our contact page.

© Jane Secker, 2011