• New restriction: No press articles
  A new restriction now applies for press articles. Following concerns expressed by newspaper publishers, the federal government deleted all references to “newspapers” and “magazines” from the copyright legislation.
  As a result, the law no longer grants permission to use articles from newspapers and general interest magazines for lessons, teaching and research, for example in scanned form on a learning platform. Unless special license agreements have been concluded, the 15 percent rule applies and the option of quoting from articles.

• Information on copyright developments can be found in this letter [PDF] from the Head of the University Library of HTW Berlin dated 18.07.2017.

(1) For the purpose of illustration in teaching in educational establishments, up to 15 per cent of a published work may be reproduced, distributed, made available to the public or otherwise communicated to the public on a non-commercial basis

1. for teachers and participants at the respective event
2. for teachers and examiners at the same educational establishment and3. for third persons insofar as this serves to present lessons or lectures or the results of tuition or training or learning outcomes at the educational establishment.

(2) In derogation from subsection (1), full use may be made of illustrations, isolated articles from the same professional or scientific journal, other small-scale works and out-of-commerce works.

(3) Subsections (1) and (2) do not authorise the following uses:

1. reproduction of a work by means of recording onto video or audio recording mediums or communication to the public of a work whilst it is being publicly recited, performed or presented,
2. reproduction, distribution and communication to the public of a work in schools which is exclusively suitable, intended and labelled for teaching in schools and
3. reproduction of graphic recordings of musical works to the extent that such reproduction is not required for making content available to the public in accordance with subsections (1) or (2).

(4) Educational establishments are early childhood educational establishments, schools, universities, vocational schools, and other training and further education institutions.

(1) Up to 15 percent of a work may be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the purpose of non-commercial scientific research

1. for a specifically limited circle of persons for their personal scientific research an
2. for individual third persons insofar as this serves the monitoring of the quality of scientific research.

(2) Up to 75 per cent of a work may be reproduced for personal scientific research.

(3) In derogation from subsections (1) and (2), full use may be made of illustrations, isolated articles from the same professional or scientific journal, other small-scale works and out-of-commerce works.

(4) Subsections (1) to (3) do not authorise the recording of the public recitation, performance or presentation of a work onto a video or audio recording medium and the subsequent making available to the public of that recording.

(1) In order to enable the automatic analysis of large numbers of works (source material) for scientific research, it shall be permissible

1. to reproduce the source material, including automatically and systematically, in order to create, particularly by means of normalisation, structuring and categorisation, a corpus which can be analysed and
2. to make the corpus available to the public for a specifically limited circle of persons for their joint scientific research, as well as to individual third persons for the purpose of monitoring the quality of scientific research.

(2) If database works are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall constitute customary use in accordance with section 55a sentence 1. If insubstantial parts of databases are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall be deemed consistent with the normal utilisation of the database and with the legitimate interests of the producer of the database within the meaning of section 87b (1) sentence 2 and section 87e.

(3) Once the research work has been completed, the corpus and the reproductions of the source material shall be deleted; they may no longer be made available to the public. It shall, however, be permissible to transmit the corpus and the reproductions of the source material to the institutions referred to in sections 60e and 60f for the purpose of long-term storage.

(1) Publicly accessible libraries which neither directly nor indirectly serve commercial purposes (libraries) may reproduce a work from their holdings or exhibitions, or have such a work reproduced, for the purpose of making available, indexing, cataloguing, preservation and restoration, including more than once and with technically required alterations.

(4) Libraries may make a work from their holdings available to their users for personal research or private studies at terminals on their premises. They may enable users, for non-commercial purposes, to reproduce up to 10 per cent of a work per session and to make reproductions of isolated illustrations, articles from the same professional or scientific journal, other small-scale works and out-of-commerce works.

(5) In response to individual orders, libraries may for non-commercial purposes transfer reproductions of up to 10 per cent of a published work to users, as well as reproductions of isolated articles which have appeared in professional or scientific journals.

Does the new regulation mean that an entire article from a magazine, such as Harvard Business Manager, can be made available to students on Moodle?

• Yes, because according to § 60a (2) [...] in derogation from subsection (1), full use may be made of illustrations, isolated articles from the same professional journal, other small-scale works and out-of-commerce works.

I often give my students papers that have appeared in conference proceedings. In terms of the complete conference proceedings, these papers (individual articles) generally account for less than 15 percent. In terms of the individual publications, however, they account for 100 percent. In this case, how is a “published work” within the meaning of “§ 60a Teaching in educational establishments” to be understood?

• In this case, § 60a paragraph 1
  is decisive. In the present example, we are talking about a collection of articles that have been published on one topic. It is a published work from which up to 15 per cent may therefore be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the seminar. However, if an article from this collective work accounts for more than 15 %, then only 15 % of this article may actually be used.
  Another legally permissible option is offered under  § Section 60a (2)