Copyright and Fair Use in Education

PRESENTATION SLIDES

a presentation by Heath Hatch, a practicing attorney and an award winning physics lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 11/9/2016

The recent requirement by HCC to have all printed material to be disseminated to students first checked for copyright infringement has led to many questions across the campus. What is copyright? Under what circumstances would copyright be violated? How can copyright violation be avoided while keeping the cost of student materials down? 

On November 9, Heath Hatch, a UMass physics lecturer and former lawyer joined HCC faculty and staff to educate us on this subject area. Copyright is a form of protection to an author’s expression of an idea. The original expression of the idea is protected for the lifetime of that author plus an additional 70 years. Copyright does NOT protect the idea itself (i.e. formulas, discovery of science are not copyrightable); however, the expression of that idea IS. As soon as an author transcribes this idea, it is considered copyrighted—even if it is not registered nor explicitly states that it is copyrighted. Thus, if an HCC faculty member takes another lecturer’s slides, written work, or pictures to disseminate to their students, he has violated the original author’s copyright. Simply citing the source of the work does not avoid copyright infringement. Although that HCC faculty member may not be at risk of being prosecuted as he can claim fair use—that he was using it solely for teaching purposes--the larger institution (HCC) may be at risk. Thus, HCC wants to protect the institution as a whole from future violations that could lead to their prosecution. 

What can HCC faculty and staff do to avoid copyright violation? Well, they could follow the route suggested by submitting all printed work to Xanedu who assures the original authors are properly compensated. To keep costs down, a link to outside articles could be posted on a course Moodle site (Note-while posting PDF’s of the article does violate copyright, links do not). They could also search for Public Domain works which include any material produced through state and federal funding as this material has been produced with the intention of others using it for free. 

(reported by Emily Rabinsky, biology faculty member and PDC member.)

WATCH: Copyright on Campus for a good overview of points covered in presentation

Q&A During Workshop - Part 1