Copyright issues in education are not just an issue at CIT, all around Australia schools, universities TAFE’s and private RTO’s are grappling with choices about copyright in education. There isn’t one size fits all answer, and for the VET sector lots of other issues like competition make the copyright choices not harder, but requiring more thought. Over the last four weeks I have been travelling all over Australia discussing these topics with TAFE, community providers, private RTO’s and departmental staff. It has been interesting to compare all the different viewpoints, and what concerns people the most. One of the most hotly debated topics has been moral rights and how institutions and teachers should handle this issue in education.

If you would like to read and hear more about this trip – please link across to Copyright at CIT wiki

Vanessa

If you think copyright has been quiet lately? No it hasn’t, there just hasn’t been much in the way of education and copyright, but industry wise lots is happening all over the world. As part of my WebCT course I used to maintain a links page, showing learners just how much is happening with copyright everyday, you know, who is suing who, who thinks copyright is dead, who thinks copyright should be extended in time and scope, I particularly like this recent one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo it’s about USA fair use, but there are parallels for us. Copyright is so emotional; well we are dealing with people’s creativity, but at the same time copyright is created by the government for the people, so you can get it changed if you lobby the government. So it is in the best interest of the lobbyist to create publicity for their cause in copyright.

Anyway there was so much I gave up on a links page and created: http://del.icio.us/CopyrightNews (slow – I know) which is current news about copyright, you can choose your industry area to see if anything has happened recently like music, or graphic design, or if you are just interested in current month choose that. My class like the new format, and if they want they continue to access it, they can.

For those interested in more static official online resources of copyright there is always: http://del.icio.us/citllccopyright , in fact if you are interested in your own subject areas have you looked at http://del.icio.us/citllcsubjectguides which provides access to online resources for many subjects taught at the CIT.

Any copyright has not gone the way of the dodo, yet, in fact, it’s quite delicious at the moment.

Vanessa

This week we look at insubstantial copying. It has been a long established practice that educational institutions can copy ‘insubstantial portions’ of literary and dramatic works, NOT musical or artistic.

These copies have to be used in the course of education, on the premises of the institution, and a whole work can never be copied. This is totally free and not remunerable under the statutory licence.

What is insubstantial? In the old terms this was 1% of the original work if the work was over 200 pages, or two pages for works under 200 pages. Nor could a teacher use any part of the same book within 14 days.

What the amendments did was legalise what many have been doing anyway, for electronic works. If an electronic document is paginated, like a printed book, for example a PDF document, then you can copy 1 to 2 pages.

For works that are not paginated, you must go back to the old rule of no more than 1% of the words, and it has added that they must be consecutive to be considered insubstantial. Otherwise it is considered remunerable under the statutory licence.

What you must do: To comply with the Act, all you need to do, is include a citation of the original work.