Abstract: The accepted view that academics own the copyright in the works they produce is being eroded in practice by publishers requiring authors to cede rights to them for publication, and by the development of Virtual Learning Environments, where the concept of things produced 'in the course of employment' has to be revisited, and the right of issuing copies of work to the public is compounded by the variety of extra rights involved (especially recording rights and performance rights) and by the nature of the act of 'communicating to the public' on the internet or an intranet.