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TEACH vs. DMCA Showdown Looming
TVmisGuided writes "A copyright showdown between the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and the Teach (Technology Education and Copyright Harmonization) Act is brewing that will have serious implications on the future of higher education on-line. The article
from Chronicle.com spells out the upcoming brouhaha. IMO, this will be one of the strongest litmus tests of the DMCA since it was signed into law in the U.S."
The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act This site gives a bit more background into why it was considered necessary, as well as examples of how it is to be implemented.
Since we all know what the DMCA is, would be to have a link or two to the TEACH act for those of us who dont know what its about
The house...
www.ala.org/washoff/teach.html
Couldnt find a good senate one... but thats a start
moo.
Educators and Copyright (Score:2)
by Bonker (243350) on 15:09 Tuesday 25 March 2003 (#5593550)
(http://www.furinkan.net/)
Many educators I know (Elementary school teachers, so take that into account) honestly beleive they are completely immune from copyright law because they are educators.
I routinely hear of a teacher buying or borrowing a book and then copying that book in its entirety on a xerox machine, and then distributing copies to students or other teachers. When asked about it, the response is invariably the same. "Oh, it's okay. I'm a teacher."
But educators are exempt from copyright laws in many ways that common folk are. There are four factors outlined in Section 107 of the copyright law that determine fair use for educators:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes.
The nature of the copyrighted work.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
So it's essentially a "good faith" doctrine: is the copied portion brief? Is this use of the work likely to threaten its market potential? Is your intent to avoid paying for copyrighted materials?
Educators definitely have rights and privilages outside of mere mortals. They do not have blank checks or blanket protection-- but they certainly are exempt in many ways. If that was the last copy of an out-of-print or hard to find book, or a book that those other educators or students would otherwise not be able to obtain (ie, cost prohibitive) and their copies would not be further distributed (here, we re-collect and/or destroy copies like that once we're done with them) then it is fine.
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Actually, Departments at my school, Vanderbilt University, are forced to pay in the THOUSANDS to show a movie to a classroom or provide to the class a chapter of a book. I'm not sure about the legality of taking clips, but I know we are currently paying to do so.
barzelay.net
In fact, technically that is breaking the law, and it's the reason we get all worked up about it. The DMCA makes it a crime to "[...] circumvent a technical protection measure that [...] protects a copyrighted work". Nowhere does the DMCA say that the crime occurs only when the subsequent use of the work would constitute copyright infringement. (It does make a limited exception for enumerated classes of works; such enumeration is the province of the Librarian of Congress, and so far that office has not granted many exceptions. DVDs are definitely not within the exception to date.)
Fair use is a defense only to an accusation of copyright infringement. Since infringement doesn't have to be alleged in a DMCA case, you never get to raise the issue of fair use.
IANAL either, but I have spent an enormous amount of time discussing this on the DVD-discuss list.
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde