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Copyright: Students

Review of the copyright rules for teachers, students and researchers

Copying and Scanning as a Student

As a student, you may:

  • Freely copy from print books for your own private use as well as that of your closest family or close friends or colleagues.
  • Copy for one fellow student. However, you are not permitted to copy for several fellow students.
  • Digitally copy (scan) from print books you have borrowed at the library – with certain restrictions:
    • It must take place at the library
    •  You may only use the material for purely private purposes. Therefore, you may not forward or share scanned material. 
    •  If you wish to copy course literature or supplementary literature digitally for use in your studies, you may only copy 20 % of a work and maximum 50 pages of the work. You may send the digital copy to your own e-mail address but not share it with anyone outside your household.
      As a student, you may, according to the Copydan agreement, share a digital copy of course literature or supplementary literature with your fellow students by uploading the copy to Canvas, as it is a password-protected and secure closed network.

Stop Plagiarism

Radio, TV and Commercials

As a student, you have access to more than one million radio and TV broadcasts and advertisements for use in your studies via Mediestream.

You may only use the material in connection with your studies, i.e. for research and as a source with a link, see Different types of Material in Connection with Teaching Activities.

Publishing Your Thesis in the CBS Research Portal, research.cbs.dk

You hold the copyright to your thesis. You have the possibility to publish your thesis in the CBS Research Portal, research.cbs.dk, when you hand in your thesis in Digital Exam. In this way, you allow others to read your thesis and be inspired by it. If you have co-authored a thesis, all co-authors need to give their permission to publish it.

As you (and your co-authors) hereby consent to making your thesis publicly available, it is your responsibility to ensure that its content may legally be published. 

If you publish your thesis, you should be aware of the following: 

Recording Classes

When it comes to recordings that you wish to share with others, then both copyright rules and the rules in the Danish Data Protection Act are important:

  • No matter whether you make sound or video recordings of your classes, you must obtain your teacher’s consent.
  • You must obtain your teacher’s consent if you wish to share this material with others.
  • If other fellow students feature on the recording, e.g. if they contribute to a debate, you must also obtain consent from them before publishing the recording.
  • If you yourself contribute to or participate actively in any other way in a class that is being recorded with a view to being published, you should be asked for permission before it is published. And if you say no, the recording should not be published.
  • See more on recording lectures here and read CBS' rules for recording lectures here.

Sharing Material

As a student at CBS, you have access to a number of databases, e-journals and e-books. You may send a direct link (deep link) to for example an article from one of the university’s e-journals to your fellow students. Read more about how to create links. You may also link to legal material that is publicly available on the internet.

If you have downloaded material from a database, an e-journal or and an e-book that you only have access to via CBS Library, then you need to be aware of the licence agreement that exists between the publisher and CBS Library, which entails that you may not upload it to Canvas. However, you still have the possibility of sending a link to the material.

Always remember to cite the source.

Many people use social media, including Facebook, as a platform to share and thereby upload teaching material in connection with their studies. You may for example upload articles or the like that you have access to via CBS Library's databases or additional information resources. But it is most often a breach of copyright to share material through Facebook. This applies even if you upload material to a closed group.

Images

Images are protected by copyright law. You must therefore have permission to  use them.

The creator may have given permission for free use of the image either by disclosing this specifically or through a Creative Commons license. You can read more about Creative Commons.

Older images:

If the creator of an image died more than 70 years ago, then the copyright protection has expired and, as a student, you are free to use the image.

Remember to credit the creator:
The creator’s name must be clearly stated in connection with the reproduction of the image. Moreover, the image may not be modified to any great extent or reproduced in such a way that it will offend the creator.

CBS has entered into an agreement with Copydan Visual [in Danish] regarding the use of isolated/stand-alone images etc. in connection with teaching activities, including when you write assignments. In this context, images should be broadly understood as art, drawings, photographs, illustrations, figures, and graphs.

The Copydan agreement covers both print isolated/stand-alone images (i.e. images that are not used together with a text) and digital images that are legally available on the internet. 

It permits you to:

  • copy or print images
  • scan or download images and transfer them to for example PowerPoint, CBS Canvas or the like.

You may not upload images to publicly accessible websites (such as for example CBS’ website). Instead, use CBS Canvas when you wish to share material with your students.

Exceptions:
The agreement does not cover images from subscription-based databases or CBS’ e-journals or e-books, see Use of Licensed E-books or E-journals in Connection with Teaching Activities. Images accompanied by text are not covered by the agreement. In this case, you should consult the agreement with Copydan Writing [in Danish].


Colourbox 

Colourbox is an image database with over 24 million images, illustrations, and videos.

Access for CBS staff and students:
CBS Library has taken an educational licence that allows CBS staff and students to download up to 30 pictures per user per month for educational use. To download images, you need to create an account with Colourbox. Use the license keys on my.cbs.dk and CBSshare. Via this link, you can find more information on how to register as a user of Colourbox. You can also find a more detailed description of the conditions under which you may use material from Colourbox.


Find images you may legally use:
access to a variety of image databases where you can find images that you may legally use

If you upload an assignment to a thesis/dissertation repository, social media, your website or similar, in such a way that the assignment becomes publicly available, then you will no longer be covered by the agreement between CBS and Copydan Visuals.

You must therefore either remove the images from the assignment, contact the copyright holders and ask for permission to use the images or find images that have been assigned a Creative Commons licence.

Find images you may legally use:
Access to a variety of image databases where you can find images that you may legally use

If you take any images yourself that include people, which you then go on to use in an assignment, you must remember to get permission from the people who appear in the photo. It is always best to get such consent in writing.

Quotations and Plagiarism

Quotations:

When you write assignments, it is both common and legal to quote from books or other sources. You may quote text excerpts from books and other sources according to the Danish Copyright Act’s § 22.

But it is difficult to say just how much you may quote before it is plagiarism and you thereby violate the copyright of others. Always remember to quote sources correctly, to clearly indicate that it is a quotation and to indicate which source you are quoting from. See here for more information.

Plagiarism:

If you in a paper use text excerpts from books without quoting the source, it is plagiarism. This is under no circumstances permitted.

In line with other universities, CBS uses anti-plagiarism systems that check for plagiarism in papers that are handed in. In the worst-case scenario, plagiarism can result in expulsion from your studies. Read more about plagiarism.

Use of previous assignments in an assignment:

Remember to cite your previous assignments correctly if you use them as sources in your assignment, e.g. by including text excerpts from them. Otherwise, it will be considered to be plagiarism.

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