Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Current News
Copyright Compliance on Campus: Make It Easy
10/24/2005
By Laura Gasaway
Law Professor and Director of the Law Library, University of North Carolina
I applaud Diane Barbour’s article “Online Piracy, Ethical Behavior, and the Unintended Consequences of Technology” in the 6/8/2005 issue of C2. Of course, illegal sharing of music and videos by students garners most of the attention—and the concern—devoted to campus copyright infringement. But adherence to copyright law, particularly in the use of course management systems by faculty and staff, also is critically important.
There are three common copyright phenomena on campuses today: compliance, infringement and, mostly, confusion. I frequently receive inquiries from faculty on my campus and from institutions around the country seeking guidance on the secondary use of copyrighted articles and book chapters as they prepare electronic course materials.
A primary reason for the confusion: Course management systems are used by professors who typically have not had copyright training. Many know neither what they may or may not do, nor the legal risks to which they expose themselves and their universities. The result can be infringement, both accidental and willful. But sometimes the result can be over-compliance. For example, a course management system user might pay for permission to reuse copyrighted content within his or her course materials to which the university already has access under a direct licensing agreement with a publisher or aggregator. This is an easy mistake to make because e-journals are licensed rather than sold, and the provisions of a license for a given publication can be complex. Another common instance of over-compliance: purchase of copyright permission for the first-time use of copyrighted materials, which is not always required. (Details on reproduction of copyrighted works for the classroom under copyright guidelines can be found at http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/classroom-guidelines.htm.)
A key to overcoming these problems, I believe, is to create easy ways for end users to follow the law and support creators’ intellectual property rights—using means that dovetail with the workflow of applications. New information and entertainment technologies make it easy to incorporate copyrighted works within course management systems. So, copyright permission capability should be built into the technology in a way that’s straightforward and non-disruptive.
One good example is the recent effort of the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and Blackboard to offer copyright permissions capabilities within the Blackboard Learning System (www.copyright.com/blackboard). It places licensing where it’s needed: within the workflow of the course management system, where faculty and staff engage in the e-learning development process. There are other examples, among them: CCC’s licensing capabilities are included in Docutek ERes electronic reserve application and OCLC’s ILLiad interlibrary loan system.
Copyright awareness should be an integral part of our institutions’ codes
of ethical conduct, as well as a life lesson we teach our students. The integration
of copyright permissions into the everyday use of new educational and entertainment
technology helps us toward these goals.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- IT Trends :: Thursday, July 3, 2008
:::::: ONLINE SECURITY
:: Payment Standard for Web Apps Goes Live
:::::: IT NEWS
:: The Quilt Coalition Rolls Out XO Communications for High-Capacity Network Services
:: Cognos Releases BI Software for Linux-based IBM System z Mainframe
:: Microsoft's XP SP3 Patch Fixes Antivirus Glitch
:: Trapeze Wireless Management System Adds Support for Access Control Plugins
:: U Tennessee Chattanooga Upgrades Wireless Network with Aruba
:: University of Alabama Health System Prints Up Secure Prescription Pads
:: City College of San Francisco To Deploy Emergency Notification System - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, July 2, 2008
:::::: REPOSITORIES
: Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
: Wake Forest U Aims To Reduce Note Taking with Classroom Capture
: SharePoint Takes Center Stage at Catalyst Event
: U Phoenix Owner Apollo Group Announces Sudden Resignation of President
: Sony Launches Education Program for Displays, Projectors - Web 2.0 :: Wednesday, July 2, 2008
:::::: THE BUZZ
: Automation Chimera: Education is Not Management
:::::: WEB 2.0 IN ACTION
: Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
:::::: PRODUCTS AND APPS
: Project Wonderland: Good Avatars Make Good Neighbors
: Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
: Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
: Wake Forest U Aims To Reduce Note Taking with Classroom Capture - News Update :: Tuesday, July 1, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: U Illinois Urbana-Champaign Named CUDA Center of Excellence
: Wake Forest U Aims To Reduce Note Taking with Classroom Capture
: SharePoint Takes Center Stage at Catalyst Event
: The Wharton School Beefs Up Data Center with Blade Servers
: New Vendor Consortium Pushes for Digital Information Card
: eBureau, Datamark Partner for Enrollment Predictive Modeling
: VMware Finds Home on Campus in Disaster Recovery Planning
: Australian Schools Boot Microsoft for Google Gmail
: Vista SP1 'Update' Released for OS Reliability - Campus Security :: June 27, 2008
:::::: NETWORK SECURITY
: Delivering Slices of Network Securely at USC
:::::: CAMPUS SECURITY NEWS
: VMware Finds Home on Campus in Disaster Recovery Planning
: Microsoft Advisory Targets SQL Injection Attacks
: Mobile Security To Surface in Sybase iAnywhere Suite
: Southeast Missouri State Says Former Employee Took Student Data
: Universities Deploy Procera Hardware to Prioritize Network Traffic
: Dartmouth Launches 2-Week Crash Course in Security
: Survey: Many Microsoft Patches Are Going Uninstalled
: New Bluetooth Patch Fixes XP Security Hole - IT Trends :: Thursday, June 26, 2008
:::::: FOCUS
:: Lyon's 1:1 Laptop Program Aims To 'Level the Playing Field' for Students
:::::: IT NEWS
:: Windows XP's Death Is for Real, Microsoft Rep Explains
:: Temple To Deploy Wireless LAN Across 8 Campuses in Philly
:: Adobe Releases Acrobat 9, Creative Suite 3.3
:: Microsoft Open XML Converter Arrives for Mac
:: Pentaho's BI Platform Released Under GPL
:: New Bluetooth Patch Fixes XP Security Hole
:: New 11.0 openSuSE Linux OS Released
