Increasingly, the source of the material that you want to copy for research and possibly use in your work will be an electronic source. Examples would include material presented on:
- CD-ROM
- DVD
- the Internet
and could be
- on-line databases
- electronic journal articles
- film and music downloads
- web pages (including both text and illustrations)
As stated before, virtually all of this material will be covered by copyright law.
Because of the nature of the material it might well be covered by multiple copyrights, in particular films, sound recordings, databases and web pages with lots of illustrations.
You might in fact be able to copy some of this material because there are licences in place which allow you to do so. However, both the copying and the use of such material might well be covered by very specific (and sometimes very restrictive) terms set out in the licence, so it is a complex area and you might need to seek specialist advice if this type of material is a large part of your thesis.
Once again, you should copy ONLY if allowed by law, or by licence or by explicit permission.
For more information on copyright and the copying of digital images, see:
http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/stillimages/advice/copyright-and-digital-images/