Copyright Compliance on Campus: Make It Easy
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.
