RE: digital-copyright Digest 18 Sep 2004 15:00:00 -0000 Issue 421

["Harper, Georgia" <GHARPER@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Valerie writes:
Colleagues,

Suppose a professor is developing a new course for which there is no
textbook available.  How can an instructor assign students to read a
selection of articles as the "text" for the course without running afoul
of
copyright?

Essentially, the articles or excerpts would function as the text, but
the
instructor would refer to them in course materials as assigned readings.

I can imagine three ways of doing this so far, but I'm not certain of
the
copyright implications.

1) Copy articles or excerpts and distribute them to students in class.

2) Assign students to locate hardcopies of articles and read them.

3) Assign students to read articles that are available online via
research
databases.

Thanks in advance.
******************************
In response I would note that the 3 choices may be used in combination.
Clearly, the first choice would be to have the students find the
articles in databases licensed by the university, college, whatever, or
to which it subscribes (perhaps it is able to offer access to databases
from another entity). These databases are acquired at incredible expense
for the use of all the "authorized users" and this kind of use is
exactly what we contemplate when we purchase access to them. You've
already paid.

If the needed article is not contained in a database to which the school
has acquired access, next best thing is to prepare a handout, either a
physical one or an electronic one. For these, fair use will provide some
flexibility for the first semester, but subsequent uses of the same
materials for the same class should be permissioned assuming that one
can get permission (ie, that the article is one that is either
registered with the Copyright Clearance Center, or whose publisher has a
permission department and responds timely to requests for permission to
use in educational settings).

I wouldn't probably resort to the "go find it (analog) yourself"
alternative unless the other two were unavailable. It used to be the
norm, but things have changed so much and students want the convenience
of being able to read an article somewhere besides sitting in the
library. If they do have to go locate the article in a bound journal,
they will more than likely make a copy and take it with them. This is
probably fair use for the student.

Georgia Harper
Univ. of Tx. System
Office of General Counsel
gharper@xxxxxxxxxxxx
512/499-4462