Following a particularly enlightening training session offered by our
Library, I realised that the issue of copyright is exceedingly simple:
If you reproduce something which you did not create, you must seek
permission from the copyright owner.
Sadly, reproducing copyrighted material for academic purposes is no
different. Whilst agreements regarding reasonable use of copyrighted
material may exist for certain applications, it should not be assumed.
Our library informs us that they may be able to help establish who the
copyright owner is (although this is not always easy).
Also, declaring the source of the material in no way circumvents
copyright law. Plagiarism is distinctly different from copyright. The
former is unlikely to attract severe financial penalties (although that
isn't a particularly robust defence for plagiarism!) but the latter may
well do if you are reproducing someone else's photo, magazine article,
etc., for financial gain (for inclusion in lecture slides which are
taught on a course which attracts fees, for example).
Many people may do it but that doesn't make it legal, I'm afraid. I'd
strongly recommend that you seek advice from your institution regarding
this issue if you are in any doubt about the copyright of any material
you are using.
Best regards,
Dave Wright
Lecturer
-----Original Message-----
From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Adam Marshall
Sent: 13 January 2010 09:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [VLES] copyright
Does anybody have any statements for staff about copyright in the
context of a VLE, ie, what is and what is not acceptable? Do people take
the view that it is different when material is within a VLE and is not
(generally) 'public' but is restricted to a small group by username and
password?
There's some obvious cases that we know about, eg, CLA licenced material
that has been scanned in, Creative Commons licenced material, documents
that have been written specifically for the course by institutional
staff members, but what about the classic situation where a lecturer has
put their Power Point slides into the VLE and the slides contain photos
or diagrams that have been copied from other websites etc. I'm sure
everybody does this but do any institutions give guidelines as to what
is and is not acceptable and does anybody police uploaded material or
insist that a 'copyright declaration' is completed for all uploaded
material?
adam
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