Copyright Scenarios
A university Teacher Resource Team develops, hosts, and
supports online courses developed by professors in the school.
They are accused of copyright infringement because of illegally
copied articles which are a part of one of those courses.
Is this violating copyright?
Maybe. It is very common for universities to provide teams
to support the development and delivery of online courses.
The team usually has a role as the host of the server on which
the courses exist. In this particular case, the professor
has had them to scan chapters from a text, copy some graphics
form another university, and he delivers these to his students
via the Internet.
The use of online instruction has outpaced the development
of copyright legislation to regulate the use of technology
in copyright violation. While the fair use doctrine has been
found both to the favor and to the disfavor of similar professors,
the involvement of a third party, the service provider, adds
new meaning to the scenario. The professor may or may not
be found guilty, depending on the weight the particular court
places on each of the fair use elements. Logically, we recommend
that the professor get permission, or buy sufficient copies.
The scenario though, is about the university Teacher Resource
Team, who knowingly made the copies, and supported their distribution.
A number of cases have found these and other kinds of ISPs
guilty of contributory infringement.
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
(OCILLA) was designed to protect some ISPs and other providers
in the event that copyright infringement occurred on their
servers without their knowledge. This “safe harbor”
act itself is limited, in that there is an expectation that
the service provider has a policy to detect and remove protected
materials that have no permission. The general rule of thumb
is that the provider is not liable if their role remains passive.
The scenario indicates that this is not the case. The university
Teacher Resource Team is guilty of contributory infringement.
Some interesting cases that have emerged pertaining to contributory
infringement are:
Intellectual Reserve Inc. v Utah Lighthouse Ministries,
Inc.
Bernstein v JC Penney Inc.
Religious Technology Center v Netcom Online Communication
Services
CoStar Group Inc v LoopNet Inc
Church of Scientology v Dataweb
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