at 3rd February 1997

Avoiding copyright problems

The development of the Information Skills program gave TILT's Group C valuable experience of the problems of obtaining copyright.

As the Information Skills topic itself, although essential for successful study, is not a compulsory part of the undergraduate syllabus, an effort had to be made to enliven it by the use of relevant exercises and examples and a liberal spread of often humorous graphics to emphasise the main points. This led to the difficulty of finding appropriate material without entailing copyright charges.

Permission was sought to reproduce short text extracts from a variety of sources for the package How to Choose Books and Journals, and although this was eventually granted, the process was certainly a slow and frustrating one. Most publishers are understandably wary of granting permission for computer based material until they are quite clear as to how it will be used. Our experience was that the process was accelerated by including screen shots with the requests, which immediately illustrated how the extracts would appear. No charge was levied as long as the material was to be used for educational purposes, but a number of publishers asked that we approach them again whenever the packages were to be distributed beyond the campus, even to other Higher Education institutions, which led to further delays.

With hindsight, it would have saved time if we had simply invented some extracts to include in the package, but this would have been at the expense of authenticity. It is an area which is likely to continue to cause problems.

Copyright has emerged as a common preoccupation of many of the departments involved in Group D, so far with no totally satisfactory conclusion. It is recognised as being a particular problem for multimedia generation, largely because of the wealth of sources which have to be cleared for copyright purposes. In general, Group D has been able to avoid using copyright material and has had sufficient skills in making diagrams, pictures, animations, film and music of their own. The problem has been resolved to a certain extent by the TLTP coordinating committee which has published a set of copyright guidelines [HEFCE 1994] and held workshops on the issue.

The TLTP Music Consortium has tackled the issue by pursuing a publishing option with Oxford University Press. This means that the consortium may have access to a range of materials published by OUP, including sound recordings and scores. Music's current thinking is that it will try to use as little copyright material as possible. Hispanic Studies, which faces the problem of using material taken from satellite broadcasts, has adopted the attitude that, until a satisfactory solution is agreed nationally and internationally, it will generate all material from its own resources. This it is able to do because it can draw on studio facilities for recording its own sound and video, but it recognises that not all departments are in such a position. Dentistry and the Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, with extensive banks of their own generated material are similarly fortunately placed and Group B have also been able to avoid copyright problems in this way.

Where the copyright ownership remains wholly with the teacher or the insitution, this allows the learning package to be used by students outside the constraints of the classroom, whereas the licencing of commercial software usually restricts this use. In the field of education, manufacturers are sometimes willing to allow their own material to be used without enforcing copyright, as this promotes their own material at no cost. However, their agreement should be sought in each case. It is clear that if multimedia is to be successfully used in teaching then the copyright problem will have to be resolved.

Reference

TLTP, Copyright Guidelines for TLTP, HEFCE, Nov 1994

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