copyright

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It might not be yours

Byuclafaculty

Both the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Inside Higher Ed are running stories about an AAUP warning that faculty who give MOOC-type courses may not end up owning the content.  According to the Chronicle, the AAUP will be starting a campaign to clarify ownership of faculty intellectual property. The Chronicle story is at http://chronicle.com/article/AAUP-Sees-MOOCs-as-Spawning/139743 The Inside Higher Ed version is at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/06/13/aaup-session-centers-intellectual-property-and-academic-freedom-online-education-age You may think it’s yours but…

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HathiTrust

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story* indicating that the American Library Assn. is supporting various universities (including UC) and their position in the HathiTrust case.  “HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.”  [See http://www.hathitrust.org/ ] This is a case involving charges of copyright infringement by an organization called the Authors Guild.  We have posted entries about this case before.  The purpose of the HathiTrust is said to be “preserving and providing access to digitized book and journal content from the partner library collections. This…

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Regents Meeting Coming Next Week

Byuclafaculty

The Regents are meeting March 13-14 – Wednesday-Thursday of next week.  The agenda is only partly online.  At this point it just lists topics without the supporting materials.  One March 13 item is the UCLA Health Sciences Teaching and Learning Center which we are assured won’t cost the campus a penny.  Of course, we know the Regents will carefully undertake a review of the business plan using outside independent expertise and will be monitoring the project after it is built to ensure it is a total success, just as they did, and surely will do, with the Grand Hotel: http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/mar13/gb.pdf…

Concerns about Justice Dept. intervention in university library electronic reserves

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today has an article concerning a matter on which we have posted in the past.  Increasingly, faculty put material on reserve for students.  Typically, such material is not available to the general public; some kind of password or course registration is required.  Publishers have sued regarding copyright violation in a case involving Georgia State U.  So far, the library there has prevailed. Apparently, the U.S. Dept. of Justice wants to intervene in the case, and the suspicion is that the intervention will be on the side of the publishers who are appealing a lower court ruling.  You…

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More on the Stream

Byuclafaculty

The Daily Bruin today has a report that UCLA got another favorable decision regarding the use of live-streaming videos for course purposes. Live-streaming means essentially what you see on websites such as YouTube, i.e., a video (or audio) that you click on and it plays from the web.  The video is not a file that is stored on your computer.  The analogy would be that watching a TV broadcast is similar to live-streaming.  Owning a DVD and playing it on your TV is like having a stored file that you play. Background: There was a prior case in which the…

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Legal victory for university consortium that includes UC

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed is reporting a legal victory concerning a Google/university partnership that involves indexing a vast number of books.  Excerpt:Much of the work of the HathiTrust (a consortium of universities) to make books in university collections more easily searchable and accessible to people with disabilities is protected by “fair use” and is not subject to a copyright suit brought by authors’ groups, a federal judge has ruled…I can’t give you the ins and outs of this case but UC is a member of the HathiTrust.  The full Inside Higher Ed article is at:http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/10/11/fair-use-applies-book-digitizing-work-judge-rules That article links to a legal blog which…

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Regents’ Litigation Agenda: Behind Closed Doors

Byuclafaculty

Behind closed doors on July 18th, the Regents will be discussing various items of litigation.  The doors are locked but we do know the items: AUTHORS GUILD, et al. v. HATHITRUST, et al. – The case has to do with digitalization of “orphan” works at university libraries, not just UC, a project generally supported by university libraries around the U.S.  “Orphan” works are older books that are out of print and either out of copyright or whose copyright holders cannot be determined.  BAKER, et al. v. KATEHI, et. al. – Mediation Scheduled – Constitutional and State Law Claims Arising from…

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Duly Noted

Byuclafaculty

Dostoyevsky’s notes did get published.  But did you know that UC has rules against students publishing notes taken in class?  There are websites which make a business of publishing student classnotes.  Scroll to the bottom of this entry for an example.  UC threatens legal action when notes from its classes are distributed.According to CaliforniaWatch:…The policies raise questions about whether instructors or students have copyrights to the notes students take in class. While the California Education Code prohibits students and others from selling class notes – and many campuses have policies that also ban unauthorized note-selling – critics say students, not instructors, own…

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Back in the Stream

Byuclafaculty

You may recall a brief episode in which classes which used streaming video at UCLA suddenly had the service cut off – and then restored after a brief interval. The practice of making such video course assignments available over a password-protected network to students was challenged in court as a copyright violation. The university restored the service when it concluded there was not a copyright violation. (You can find earlier posts about this matter on this blog.) A court victory was announced by the university yesterday. However, questions remain about how general the victory is. See below: Court dismisses lawsuit…

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Digital Lawsuit Includes UC

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed reports that UC is among various universities being sued for digitizing “orphan books” (books whose copyrights appear to have expired). It provides a link to the plaintiff’s press release: Authors Guild, Australian Society of Authors, Quebec Writers Union Sue Five U.S. Universities: Suit seeks impoundment of unauthorized scans of 7 million books September 12, 2011. This afternoon, we filed suit against HathiTrust, the University of Michigan and four other universities over their storage and use of millions of copyright-protected books. The press release follows: AUTHORS AND AUTHORS’ GROUPS FROM AUSTRALIA, QUEBEC, THE U.K., AND U.S. SUE HATHITRUST,…