So had this from our rep;

 

I have now had the response below from our Global Privacy Officer:

 

As part of our implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we introduced the new privacy pop-up in Learn that allows clients to reference their privacy policy/statement and support them with their requirement to be transparent to individuals. As part of the privacy pop-up we also require the users to accept our general Terms of Use. Requiring end users to agree to Terms of Use is common practice for the provision of software and is required, for instance, to protect ourselves against the misuse of our products.

 

In our Terms of Use we have included wording in section 3 (which you highlighted) that grants Blackboard a limited license to submitted, posted or displayed content. As the provision of Learn functionalities is likely to lead to content being used and copied as part of the system functionalities (e.g., during the creation of back-up copies of your Learn instance), Blackboard requires a license to be able to comply with applicable copyright laws. Without obtaining the license for the user’s content, Blackboard could be in breach of copyright law when it copies or otherwise uses content that was submitted, posted or displayed by your users. The purpose of the highlighted section is therefore to ensure that we can provide the Learn functionalities in way that complies with copyright laws. We clarify in the Terms of Use that the user retains the rights to any such content.

 

It’s also important to mention that nothing in the Terms of Use can override the agreement between the University of South Wales and Blackboard. This is clarified in the last paragraph of the introductory section of the Terms of Use.

 

By accessing or using our products the users agree to be bound by the Terms of Use (see introductory section). This means that when the privacy pop-up window for Learn is disabled, the Terms of Use still apply.

I understand this but I'm still concerned as the wording;

"adapt, modify, publish, transmit, create derivative works from"

goes further than covering Blackboard to perform backups and restoration (where content is simply duplicated, stored or copied wholesale).

A reasonable person could interpret this as use our content to make other content and publish it elsewhere.

If you apply CU4 this seems impossible to get rid of – it appears in the apps even though it is disabled in sys admin

Is anyone else concerned with this?

 

 

 

We applied CU4 onto our 2017 Q4 Bb Learn over the weekend. Launching Bb after this all users are shown a new T+C box which they must agree to before continuing;

 

 

A bit of digging showed a new ‘Cookie Disclosure’ Admin option (which weirdly was enabled)

 

 

Following the T+C links

 

https://www.blackboard.com/legal/privacy-policy.html

and

https://www.blackboard.com/legal/terms-of-use.html

 

led some of our staff to notice the option on content rights;

 

 

3. Content & your rights

You are responsible for Content that you post to the Products, and any consequences thereof. The Content you submit, post, or display may be viewed by other Users of the Products. You may be able to control the Content that other Users of certain Products may access through the privacy options in certain Products.

 

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post, or display on or through the Products. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Products, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, host, store, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, create derivative works from, communicate, display, and/or distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed) as part of providing any of the Products.

 

Staff are (quite rightly) asking – “does this mean all my content can be used by Bb?” (obviously we understand that technically the university owns the copyright but that is a moot point)

 

I’m not aware of this being part of our data processing agreement with Bb in previous renewals so wondering if this is new or has this always been implicit – plus now that I have disabled the message, where does this place our users in terms of IPR over their notes.

 

 

Has anyone else seen this?

 

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