Copyright and intellectual property issues are a part of the fabric of research and scholarly communications, and thus all Stanford faculty, students and staff need a working understanding of copyright law as it impacts their daily lives. The Copyright Reminder, which highlights common campus copyright concerns and outlines fundamental elements of US copyright law, is distributed annually to ensure that the Stanford community remains aware of those issues.
Distance learning
The TEACH Act extends the Face-to-Face Teaching exemption to distance learning courses in a limited way. The exemption applies only to online courses restricted to registered students, and thus is rarely applicable at Stanford, as Stanford has very few of these mediated distance online courses. This exemption does not apply to iTunes U or to MOOCs (eg Coursera, NovoEd, Lagunita), which are open to students outside of Stanford, and faculty preparing such courses will need to rely on the fair use exemption, or pay for distribution rights.
When the TEACH Act does apply, it allows the instructor to transmit performances of entire non-dramatic works and reasonable and limited portions of any other audiovisual work without obtaining permission. For the act to apply, the performance or display must be:
- A regular part of mediated instructional activity;
- Made by, at the direction of, or under the supervision of the instructor; and
- Directly related and of material assistance to the content of the course.
Further, the following technological restraints must be in effect:
- The content must be accessible only to those students who are enrolled in the course;
- The content must be accessible only for the duration of a class session;
- To the extent technologically possible, the content must be protected from further distribution (“downstream-controlled”); and
- To the extent technologically possible, the content must not be subject to retention by students
- All material displayed must contain the following notice:
The materials on this course website are only for the use of students enrolled in this course for purposes associated with this course and may not be retained or further disseminated. The materials on this course website may be protected by copyright; any further use of this material may be in violation of federal copyright law.
Georgia Harper at the University of Texas has produced an excellent checklist to help you determine if your use qualifies under the TEACH Act. It is online here: http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/teachact.html#checklist
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