Yes, original documents are automatically copyrighted, but who holds that
copyright? Under current laws, if the document can be consider as a
"work-for-hire" document, then the employer holds the copyright. More
precisely, if a faculty member develops a web page for their course, and does
so on school equipment (and I assume everyone would be posting on the school
web server, as opposed to a privately owned machine), then NIU has at least
some claim to copyright on that material.
Even more complicated -- what happens when a teacher designs a course
activity in which students create collaborative or individual web documents
as a component of that course, and they do so on school machines during class
time, directed by the teacher? As far as I can tell, all three parties (NIU,
the teacher, and the student) hold some claim to the copyright of those
documents.
If anyone can clarify some of this, I think we'd all appreciate it.
Here are some sites relevent to copyright issues:
http://www.cni.org/docs/infopols/US.Copyright.Basics.html -- basic copyright
law explanation
http://www.cni.org/docs/infopols/US.Copyright.1976-1.html -- the beginning of
the entire 1976 US copyright law (links at bottom lead to the rest of the
document)
http://www.cni.org/docs/infopols/US.Freedom.Info.Act.html -- 1996 Freedom of
information act
http://www.cni.org/regconfs/1997/ukoln-content/repor~t5.html -- index to a
bunch of papers on "The global Digital Library" -- from a 1997 conference.
-Eric Hoffman
(I am sure there are others, but this is what I could find quickly :)
Jim Thomas wrote:
> David Gunkel reminded us that copyright need not be explicitly stated.
> It's a good point to keep in mind: Presumptive copyright exists from the
> moment of "publication." Original course material published on a homepage
> is presumptively protected, barring contractual or other arrangements
> that grant ownership to the employer or others.
>
> jt