Copyright help

From Soteria

All works of authorship (= in essence all original published articles, books, photo's, drawings, databases etc, even if there is no copyright mention) are automatically subject to copyright and require the prior explicit permission of (and sometimes compensation to) the author before use/copy/etc.

Under Belgian law (but it is quite similar in all countries), you have (amongst others) the following (possibly relevant) exceptions to the rule of prior permission/compensation:

- use for short citations (not the full text) for education or scientific purposes in accordance with professional standards.

- use as part of a publicly accessible exhibition/workshop/seminar (whereby the work of authorship is not the main purpose of the exhibition)

- use of a work of authorship for education or non-commercial scientific research within a university by means of a closed network for internal ! use only (e.g. intranet)

It is required to mention the source and the author, if possible.

So if you are not sure whether you can copy or use a larger part of a text (if the author does not explicitly permit this in the publication itself or the exceptions above are not applicable), it is best to request the author (and/or copyrightholder) directly for permission.