Copyright Questions of the Month. Posting Learning Materials Online

Q: A teacher at an accredited, nonprofit public high school wants to scan to PDF 16 pages from a nonfiction book (copyright 2010) that has 412 pages. He then wants to make the pages accessible to his students via his website for instructional purposes. However, it is an open website, and the students do not need to log in to get to his website or to open these PDF pages.

He says the material will only be made available during the time the students are studying that unit (about one month). If he posts a fair use notice with the pages (a statement that says the information comes from another source), is it permissible to provide these scanned pages?

A: For the most part, educational uses of materials posted online by teachers are governed by the TEACH Act. The TEACH Act is codified as section 110(2) of the current copyright statute. Because the 16 pages are not from a work produced primarily for online instruction, and we have no indication that the copy from which the pages were taken was pirated, we may look to the TEACH Act for guidance.

The pages are a nondramatic literary work. If 16 pages of this work are what would be “an amount comparable to that which is typically displayed in the course of a live classroom session,” the use is acceptable if(in relevant part):

1. The use of the pages is directed by the instructor as an integral part of a class session offered as a regular part of the systematic mediated instructional activities of an accredited nonprofit educational institution; AND
2. The display is directly related and of material assistance to the teaching content; AND
3. The pages are solely for and to the extent possible limited to students officially enrolled in the class; AND
4. The school has policies regarding copyright and provides information for teachers and students regarding compliance with copyright law; AND
5. The school applies technological measures to prevent students from retaining the pages for longer than the class session or from further distributing the materials to others; AND
6. The school does not interfere with any technological measures applied by the copyright owners.

Your description appears to comply with #1 and #2. Condition #3, however, is not met when the materials are made available on an open website. I donߣt know whether the school complies with #4, #5, or #6, but it is highly likely that a PDF posted on an open website can be saved to the studentߣs computer where it could be transmitted to others. So this use would appear not to comply with the requirements of the TEACH Act. Nevertheless, the teacher could still use the materials by making paper copies of the 16 pages, since that is probably less than a chapter of the book. Under either the print guidelines (Kastenmeier Guidelines) or under a fair use assessment, making one copy of the 16 pages for each student would likely be considered fair use.

COPYRIGHTING STUDENT WORK

Q: One of our art students has created an incredible computer animation. She is winning prizes for it. Can you point me to some help in how she can copyright her material? She is especially concerned about protecting her original character. She uses this character in both the digital animation and in her comic strips in the school newspaper.

A: Thanks to the Electronic Copyright Office (eCo, http://copyright.gov/eco), registering a copyright is very simple and fairly inexpensive. Your student received a copyright at the moment her original work was fixed in tangible form. To register her work, she will need to have a credit card (the charge for an author to register the author's own work in digital form is only $35). Because her work is a work of visual art, she can download the paper form for a visual art registration from the forms section of the Copyright Office website. If she fills out the paper form—not to file, but to collect the information needed—it will make her online registration much quicker and easier. The author will also need to have a digital copy of the work being registered that can be uploaded (if less than 5 MB in size) or mailed in (for larger works), following the online registration.

Every effort is made to provide accurate, up to date information in response to copyright questions. However, this column is not intended to take the place of legal advice. For more information, consult your school district's attorney.