Professional Development

Late April through Early May, I attended an online course through ACRL titled “Copyright and the Library, Part 2: Library, Classroom, and other Issues.” This course expanded on the basics discussed in Part 1 from this past summer. Taught by Tomas Lipinski, the Co-Director of the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, this course focused on sections 110, 112, and 512 in addition to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the TEACH Act. To begin we reviewed sections 108 and 109 which establish Exclusive and Distribution Rights of copyright owners, Fair Use, limitations of use by libraries and archives, as well as penalties and damages. After this brief refresher, we dived headfirst into the following sections. Please note: these are just some of the highlights as they pertain to universities and libraries.

The official copyright law and a breakdown of each section, can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office site.

110(1)–performance and display in the classroom

• protects use of copyright works by a professor in a face-to-face classroom setting.
• “face-to-face setting teaching activities” refers to instruction where the professor is simultaneously present in the same general location of the students. This is to distinguish between traditional and distance education instruction.
• includes audio-visual works and recordings of guest speakers but not guest performers.
• does not cover reproduction of the copyrighted work, only use of a copyrighted work.
• protection is negated if the copy used by the professor has knowingly obtained the work through illegal means or is unlawfully made (through circumvention methods).
• “classroom or similar place devoted to instruction” is defined as a physical space for academic instruction (to include a library or school media center).

110(2)–performance and display in distance-education setting

• this section is now included in the TEACH Act of 2002 and discusses copyright protections for distance education instruction.
• use of a copyrighted work by a professor must be an “integral part of a class.” A professor cannot show the movie Gone with the Wind in a distance education setting/transmitted via a digital network for entertainment–it must pertain to the course study and objectives.
• use of a copyrighted work in this setting must be supervised by the professor and cannot be asynchronous. The movie cannot be posted to a discussion board for students to watch at their leisure. The movie must be shown in real time if transmitted by a digital network.
• must have circumvention methods in place to prevent students from further duplication and dissemination of the work(s).
• copyrighted works used must be limited to officially-enrolled students only and must be removed from a course management system immediately following the last day of instruction.
• does not provide protection for supplementary materials in digital form (such as electronic course packs, digital library resources, or e-reserves).
• does not protect use of copyrighted works that have been knowingly obtained through illegal means or created using encryption circumvention means.
• 110(2) requires that the governing body be an accredited, nonprofit educational institution. The institution must have an institution-wide copyright policy in place, provide copyright outreach opportunities to the campus, and provide notice of copyright to students.

512–limitations to liability related to online materials

Under the DMCA of 1998, an institution can apply to the U.S. Copyright Office to become a “512 Service Provider,” as long as the requirements are met. A 512 Service Provider is “an entity offering transmission, routing, or providing connections for digital online communications” or “a provider of online services or network access.” Meaning, an entity that offers access to online content, network access, or the transmission of digital communications (such as email). 512 coverage is complex and the requirements are more stringent not only due to institution websites, but student and faculty access to creating content online (in forms such as wikis and blogs) and the potential this access has for linking to, posting, caching, and storing copyrighted materials. Wake Forest University has been a registered 512 Service Provider since 1999.