If you copy or share someone else’s copyright works without their permission and your activity is not covered by a copyright exception, you'll infringe their copyright. This page provides guidance on how to avoid legal action and what to do if you are contacted.
Overview of liability
If you infringe someone else’s copyright as part of your work at Oxford, both you and the University may be liable in the event of legal action. This is the case even if you didn’t realise that what you had done was an infringement of copyright.
Copyright infringement may be regarded as a breach of student regulations and staff employment terms and in some cases may be subject to disciplinary procedures. If you are external to the University you are responsible for acting legally and making sure you are following your employer or institution’s policies and regulations.
We recognise that serious infringement cases in education are rare but we expect you to make informed decisions about your use of copyright material. If you follow our copyright guidance, you will significantly reduce the risk of having to address infringement claims.
Peer-to-peer filesharing
If you use peer-to-peer (referred to as P2P) software to download material, you should remove the software from your PC if connecting to the Oxford network, unless you absolutely need it.
If you don't remove the P2P software, it's likely that you'll be sharing any files you have downloaded, which could be a breach of the University IT Regulations.
We take breaches of regulations extremely seriously. If you are reported for distributing unauthorised copyright material (knowingly or unknowingly), this may lead to disciplinary action and an administrative charge for handling violation notices. See the University’s policy on peer-to-peer resource sharing for more information (SSO required).
If someone contacts you about copyright infringement
If you are contacted by someone claiming to be the copyright owner of a work and asking for money or for the University to take action, contact us for support: copyright@bodleian.ac.uk.
The most common type of copyright infringement letters are from agencies representing photographers whose work is used on the University's websites without permission. These often demand payment for the licence fee the photographer would have charged for the use of the work. If you're creating web content, follow our guidance on using images online.
You should not assume that you have infringed copyright just because you've been contacted by a rights holder. But you should respond quickly to minimise any financial and reputational risk.
If you or contacted with a request under Freedom of Information or data protection legislation, please contact the University’s compliance team.
This guidance is adapted from University of Kent Copyright Guidance by Chris Morrison and Angela Groth-Seary (2020) https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent%2F01.02.92664, and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)
