Copyright and fair use

[Aesculapius]

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Hi all,
My school has, I believe recently (within the last 2-3 years) adopted what I believe is a poor policy with regards to copyright. Specifically, the professors will not post lecture slides that contain figures taken from textbooks onto Blackboard, or they will post the slide, but remove the figure and leave only the reference. I believe that the fair use doctrine allows these kinds of materials to be used for educational purposes. I'd like to know if any other school has this kind of policy, and if there are any legal types around, what they believe about this situation. I'm hoping to get this policy overturned, so I'd like to be prepared.

Thank you.

 

[FutureInternist]

We had a similar problem at our school & it ended up being that as long as the figures were from required textbooks it was legal. Having said that, there were PLENTY of figures on our lectures that were from instructor-only websites & sources other than our textbooks.

 

[OncoCaP]

Hi all,
My school has, I believe recently (within the last 2-3 years) adopted what I believe is a poor policy with regards to copyright. Specifically, the professors will not post lecture slides that contain figures taken from textbooks onto Blackboard, or they will post the slide, but remove the figure and leave only the reference. I believe that the fair use doctrine allows these kinds of materials to be used for educational purposes. I'd like to know if any other school has this kind of policy, and if there are any legal types around, what they believe about this situation. I'm hoping to get this policy overturned, so I'd like to be prepared.

Thank you.

Maybe you could talk to your deans about encouraging the use of public domain images and getting permission from publishers to post images from required textbooks. Our school also has image databases that profs can use to prepare slides. It's a problem, however. Schools have much to lose $$$ if they screw up in this area.