Making sense of copyright (24 Nov 2004)

Programme | Event report

Past event summary

This workshop addressed a number of key copyright issues in developing online teaching and learning resources for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. The event consisted of a series of presentation and discussion sessions and case studies from the field.

Topics included:

• copyright and the Internet - what you can and cannot do
• issues in generating your own materials
• copyright clearance: a guide to the process
• new developments in copyrighting

Speakers included:

• Richard McCracken, Head of Rights Department, Open University
• Alison Dickens, Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies
• Helen Pickering, HERON
• Prodromos Tsiavos, project leader of Creative Commons in the UK (CC-UK)

Programme

Event report: The tangled web making sense of copyright in developing and exploiting on-line resources

by David Newton

This workshop aimed to address a number of key copyright issues in developing online teaching and learning resources for Languages. The event consisted of a series of presentation and discussion sessions and case studies from the field. Below is a summary of the presentation given by the speakers, who have also kindly agreed to make available their presentation slides or related papers from the day.

Copyright and the Internet - what you can and cannot do

Richard McCracken, Head of Rights Department, Open University

This talk was a good introduction to the rest of the day, consisting of a very clear and comprehensive list of dos and don't with regard to copying permissions. Dividing acts of copying into Restricted and Permitted, it was made clear what options are available to members of the HE sector and what amounts of copied material may usually be designated as substantial or insubstantial . Licensing was discussed, including the notion of Explicit and Implicit licences. Finally, rights ownership and the clearing of rights were explained and discussed.
Download presentation: Restricted and Permitted Acts (Powerpoint, 30Kb)

Copyright clearance: a guide to the process

Helen Pickering, HERON

Following on from the previous presentation, in which some of the difficulties that can be experienced when dealing with publishers to obtain copyright clearance, this presentation from the HERON representative was both informative and very timely. HERON acts as a copyright clearance intermediary (primarily for book and journal extracts) and digitises the cleared material for subsequent use. As many attendees had found, the clearance process can be difficult and laborious without the help of a service such as this.
Download presentation: Copyright clearance: a guide to the process (Powerpoint, 306Kb)

Creative Commons Copyright

Prodromos Tsiavos, University of Oxford

Assertions of copyright have traditionally tended to fall into one of two categories at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding rights of reproduction, either given to the public domain or with all rights reserved. Creative Commons was set up to help people licence their works with some rights reserved, allowing other people to use parts of their work in certain pre-agreed ways without the need for any further permissions to be sought. This presentation explained the history and objectives behind Creative Commons and relevant UK, EU and international legislation, introducing the audience to the range user-friendly, online licences that they have developed. The current discussion of the current draft of the UK licences was also explained.
Download presentation: Towards Creative Education: Lessons from the CC-UK experience (Powerpoint, 671Kb)

Possibilities for open access to e-learning in HE

Nick Jackson, University of Kent

This presentation looked at open access to e-learning material, including what this notion might actually mean. Since copyright controls apply to a particular form of expression of ideas, it is difficult to prevent the taking of ideas and re-writing them anew if needed. The current variation in attitude between institutions to making teaching materials publicly-available was emphasised. The speaker therefore looks at the possibility of using existing licensing schemes, such as Open Source and Creative Commons , for the purpose of protecting materials without restricting access to use them.
Download presentation: Possibilities for open access to e-learning in HE (Powerpoint, 49Kb)

Issues in generating and marketing e-learning materials

Kate Dickens, e-languages project, University of Southampton

Based on experiences working on the e-languages project, this presentation covered the diverse range of copyright issues encountered by the project, including those relating to material generation, marketing and rights clearance. The wide range of situations encountered (for example, deep-linking to items which may attract copyright, IP ownership, private and public storage of material and its retrieval, materials based nationally and internationally, institutional policy) meant that this presentation served as a good barometer of the kinds of problems that may be faced by other institutions embarking on similar schemes.
Download presentation: Issues in generating and marketing e-learning materials (Powerpoint, 29Kb)

Sharing your materials via the web

Alison Dickens, Subject Centre LLAS

The Materials Bank is an online repository of in-house teaching materials for Higher Education, set up by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Areas Studies. The copyright issues encountered were a product of the variety and nature of the copyright status applying to the materials available (exclusive rights, non-exclusive rights, third-party copyright). Emerging rights schemes, such as CopyLeft and Creative Commons were discussed, and the speaker also took this opportunity to tell the audience about the Subject Centre's copyright booklet, which had just been published in a new, updated edition.
Download presentation: The Tangled Web: Sharing materials via the web (Powerpoint, 1,173Kb)
Download handout: Educational Copyright, edition 3 (rich text format, 120Kb)

Digitisation of audiovisual materials: why do it (and can you)?

Roger Frisby, Vice-Chair, AULC (Association of University Language Centres) and Technical Manager of Language Centres and Audio-Visual Services, Middlesex University

Although institutions may be able to obtain copying permissions from publishers for audio-visual materials, this right may not automatically extend to digitisation of materials only currently available in an analogue format. Since the use of digitised materials has grown enormously over the past few years, and seems certain to continue to do so, the speaker talked about his experiences in negotiating with publishers over obtaining the rights to carry out digitisation of already-cleared analogue material, particularly his dialogue with Palgrave Macmillan , who publish many language courses with an automatically-granted copying licence under certain conditions. The second part of the talk looked at the actual technical procedures involved in digitising audiovisual materials, which many workshop attendees had hitherto felt to be a daunting task.
Download handout: Sound recording for language teaching (pdf, 140Kb)

Copyright issues relating to Film Studies and Modern Languages staff and students

Colin Connolly, Oxford Brookes University

Colin Connolly did not present a paper on the day, but was happy for his short briefing paper below to be included with these other workshop materials.
Download handout: Copyright issues relating to Film Studies and Modern Languages staff and students (rich text format, 26Kb)

Summary

Fully-booked well in advance, and having turned away a significant number of people who would have liked to attend, excellent feedback was received from those who attended the workshop, a credit to the quality of the speakers on the day. The interest was sufficiently high that it may be considered worthwhile to run a similar event in the future or perhaps to develop the information presented into the Workshops To Go format.