One of the major unifying rallying cries among faculty has been the
protection of their work from the administration that would want to steal
it and then resell it. This battle has been going on long before
e-teaching etc. became a possibility.
The FS has worked hard on this issue. The current advice is to do as
much of the work as possible at home on your own computer.
The legal counsel of the university chided the Secretary of the FS when he
gave faculty advice on how to protect their intellectual rights.
A real battle is underway.
Electronic technology cannot be viewed independent of the broader issues
of intellectual property rights and pedagogical control.
Herb
On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, Eric Hoffman wrote:
> Let me complicate this issue a bit --
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
********************************************************************
"A community will evolve only when the people control their means of
communication." Fanon
********
Herbert J. Rubin 815-753-6424
Sociology hrubin@sun.soci.niu.edu
Northern Illinois University DeKalb, Illinois 60115
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