Copy Right!

The third webinar was led by Dr Diotalevi, an experienced and practising lawyer and professor of law. He gave us lots of advice about how to avoid lawsuits for intellectual property theft. (Note this lecture appears  to refer specifically to American Law as it applies in America and to the property of Americans)

First of all we had a look at the history of copyright law. The original basis of copyright law is to be found in the American Constitution! The present law is based on the Copyright Act of 1976 and includes 5 basic rights which can be seen in the picture taken from the presentation.

The work to be copyrighted must be 'original', not everything is copyrightable. Copyright applies to expressions and not ideas. It must be a tangible, fixed medium. There is no major protocol to show that a product is copyright.

We then looked at defenses against copyright infringement which are summarised in this slide again from the presentation.

Fair Use is a defence against copyright  infringement. It allows the use of materials in certain circumstances which are shown in the next slide.

So we can see that if something is taken for non-profit educational purposes and the size of the portion which is taken is 'reasonable', then we as teachers should be OK.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act  (DMCA) was brought in in 1998 to protect online copyrighted material but also to limit the liability of ISPs in the case of piracy by their customers.

After that the TEACH (Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonisation) Act was brought in in 2001 and sets out to clarify exactly what and when an item receives copyright and also in which circumstances this copyright will be breached. Again the slide is from Dr Diotalevi.

 

After discussing the salient points Dr  Diotalevi gave us a list of 'Dos and Don'ts' to help us as educators from falling foul of the law.

We finished off by looking at a number of situations to decide whether they complied with or fell foul of the TEACH Act. 

This was a very relevant webinar for us and gave a great deal of useful information and I intend to claim fair use for educational purposes in the reproduction of Dr Diotalevi's slides in this report in the event that they fall foul of the TEACH act ;)