The rights of copyright owners
Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights to do, or authorise others to do, certain acts in relation to the protected material.
The scope of the rights depends on the subject matter.
The exclusive rights enjoyed by owners of copyright in literary, dramatic and musical works are the rights to do or authorise the following acts:
- reproduce the work in material form;
- publish the work;
- perform the work in public;
- to communicate the work to the public;
- make an adaptation of the work; and
- do any of these acts in relation to an adaptation of the work.
The exclusive rights in relation to artistic works are more limited, and consist of the rights to:
- reproduce the work in a material form;
- publish the work; and
- to communicate the work to the public.
For Universities, the most relevant of these exclusive rights (i.e. the rights which it is important to avoid infringing) are:
- the reproduction right and
- the communication right.
(See discussions of these rights in the Universities Australia Guidelines on Print and Graphic Copying and Communication and Audio-visual Copying and Communication respectively.)
