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Library Library

Audiovisual Material

Lecturers are increasingly producing audiovisual material for their teaching. But what about copyright? And what is permitted if you use other people's work?
On this page:

Copyrighted work

Copyright applies to texts, images, films, music and other works of science or art. The creator doesn’t have to do anything to obtain copyright, as they receive it automatically.

Among other things, it allows the creator to decide how, where and when their work is published and reproduced. These so-called exploitation rights remain in force until 70 years after the death of the creator or, if the creator is a legal entity, until 70 years after the first publication of the work. The right to exploit a work can be transferred, e.g. to a publisher.

Quotation and reuse

In audiovisual teaching materials, you are permitted to quote from other people's work without the permission of the rights holder. The quote must be relevant to the subject of the video, you may not quote more than necessary, the quote must come from a legally published source and it is mandatory to mention the source.

In addition to quoting, you are always permitted to link to or embed other people's visual material, provided that this material has been published in a legal manner and the source is mentioned. In addition, you may display other people's audiovisual material within the UvA buildings if this forms part of the curriculum within non-commercial education.

The sharing and distribution of other people's audiovisual material in the digital learning environment is only permitted with the permission of the rights holder. Within non-commercial education, however, no permission is required for this reuse if the material has been published under an open licence (such as Creative Commons) or if the UvA has concluded a licence agreement that permits the copying, distribution and transfer of the material.

If the licence agreement does not permit this type of reuse or if you wish to make audiovisual material available for commercial educational purposes, the permission of the rights holder is required. Please contact Videma to arrange this. This collective management organisation collects the remuneration to be paid on behalf of film companies, TV producers and broadcasters.

Derivative works

When quoting, sharing or distributing, you must not change someone else's work. If you do, you will need permission from the rights holder(s) unless the work has been made available through a licence that permits this. The user can then create a remix (a derivative work) of the original, for example. Depending on the licence attached to the original work, conditions may be attached to the derivative work, e.g. that it must be distributed under the same licence as the original video.

Rights and own materials

The copyright for audiovisual teaching materials that you have created yourself rests with the UvA. Open licences, such as Creative Commons, are widely used in their publications. Within a single video, it is possible to provide different sections with an appropriate licence or to apply the strictest licence to the entire video. An example of the latter: if one section may be used non-commercially, this condition applies to the entire video.

You can use the UvA's corporate identity for video (in Dutch) when creating audiovisual teaching materials. People who can be identified must sign a declaration of consent for publication. For more information, please go to the UvA webpage on portrait rights (in Dutch). In addition, in connection with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), no unnecessary information that can be traced back to individual people should be included.

When publishing the work, make sure that the information about the educational institution, the name of the creator(s), the year, the chosen licence form(s), etc. can be easily found in the work itself and in the accompanying metadata. For more information on sharing teaching materials, please go to our webpage on online teaching materials.

Citation of sources

In the case of quotes, reuse and derivative works, you are always obliged to mention the source. This obligation also applies to work that is no longer subject to copyright. The proper citation of sources makes these works traceable. The way in which the sources are cited depends on the degree programme. Citation software automates the description of sources in a specific style. The UvA supports several different citation managers, consult the following webpage on citing sources and creating a bibliography.

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