Week 8 – Katherine I. Knowles, PhD

Professor A. teaches a course about American cities, specifically focusing on Chicago and New York City. As a part of the course in his face-to-face version he uses two video sets, Chicago – City of the Century (http://amzn.to/nEJmh8) and Ric Burns’ New York (http://amzn.to/qSYens). Typically he uses portions of 2 of the 3 discs in the Chicago set, and shows all 5 of the New York videos.

As Professor A begins to move his course to an online format he is faced with the problem of how to show the videos to his online students. Please consider the following questions:

1. Can Professor A. digitize and stream the videos to his students?

No, Professor A. cannot digitize and stream the videos to his students without permission.

2. What could he do to minimize the risk of copyright violations and follow fair use?

To follow fair use, Professor A. could select small clips from the films to use in his course.

3. What are other options Professor A. might consider?

Professor A. might consider seeing if he can stream these movies through his library. He could also try to determine if the films are available through various streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, or some other service.

Professor G. teaches a course in arts education. He has written many papers on the subject and as he moves his course online he would like to use some of them as readings for his course. He puts several of the articles up in his ANGEL course, but is then told by a colleague that he may be violating copyright law. Upon further inquiry, Professor G. is told that he must pay the publisher a certain amount of money per article, per semester in order to use them in his course.

1. How do you interpret this case? Is the publisher in the right to request payment?

Ultimately, it depends on the author agreement with the publisher. If Professor G. signed over all the rights to his publisher, he may no longer own dissemination rights of his work.

2. Could Professor G. make a case for fair use? How?

He could potentially make a case for fair use if he scans only a small portion of the work, perhaps a single chapter from a book, and argue that this is fair use.

3. What are some options Professor G. has for disseminating his work to students?

Professor G. could get around this issue by providing links to the articles/book chapters from the library in his online course. This would direct students to access the readings without posting them and breaking copyright. Alternatively, he could post a pre-print version of his writing.

Professor M. is an avid “screencaster,” often creating several short narrated slideshows each week that she puts online for her students. Because Professor M. knows the power of imagery, she often uses visuals to help illustrate her points. Her students often give her positive feedback about these materials. Professor M. uses Google’s image search to find relevant images for her presentations, then puts them into her slideshows. One day, a publishing company approaches Professor M. about using her slideshows in an upcoming textbook. Please consider the following about Professor M’s case.

1. Is Professor M. violating copyright/fair use by using images from Google’s image search?

Since Professor M. is using the images for a not-for-profit educational use, the incorporation of the images into her slideshows for her course does not violate fair use. However, if the creator/copyright owner protests Professor M.’s usage of the images, it could be contested in court.

2. If you determine she is in violation, what might she do to come into compliance?

I do not believe that Professor M. is in violation of fair use, but if she wanted to be extra careful she could use images she finds in databases of creative commons licensed content or through searches for images that are labeled for reuse. Additionally, she could be careful in how she links the images to original sources.

3. What about the offer from the publishing company? Can Professor M. sell them her slideshows?

No, Professor M. cannot sell the slideshows if they contain these images. She does not own the images, and therefore cannot sell them. However, Professor M. could perhaps search for alternative images labeled for reuse to incorporate into the slideshows before she sells them.

Professor D. is a tech savvy instructor who teaches film studies and multimedia creation in an online format. As a part of her course, she has an assignment where she models several video “remixes” – videos created from one or a variety of sources that often take inspiration from or follow known storylines (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic) – that she has created and then asks her students to create their own remixes and share them with others via YouTube.

Professor D. also takes short clips from Hollywood movies and presents them to the class as a part of her lectures to illustrate various topics associated with film creation and criticism. She owns the DVD’s of each movie and uses a “ripper” to pull portions of the clips, then places them into her University’s learning management system so only her students have access.

1. Is Professor D violating copyright/fair use in her remixing activity? Why or why not?

I think this activity could be okay since it is using small clips for educational purposes. Where it gets tricky is when she asks students to publish the remixes publicly to YouTube.

2. Are her students violating copyright/fair use in their remixing assignment?

Once again, I think as long as they are using the videos for educational purposes only it could be okay; however, if they post them to YouTube they may be in violation of fair use/copyright.

3. Is Professor D violating copyright/fair use in her use of the short Hollywood clips? Why or why not?

If she is only posting small portions of the clip to the learning management system, which is acceptable under fair use unless challenged by the copyright holder, she should not be considered in violation.

Reflection

What I found most interesting about this assignment was how flexible the rules of copyright/fair use can be, particularly when it comes to educational purposes. I found the university’s FAQ regarding fair use extremely helpful, and it is good to know that specific institutions may interpret the rules in certain ways. The case in which the professor who wanted to post his own articles makes a good case for why in academia we should be striving to work more within the parameters of Creative Commons and Open Access. However, I understand that a lot of these publishing means are potentially considered less prestigious and can be detrimental to career advancement. Ultimately, this assignment raised very important issues that do not have an easy answer.