Copyright for Educators

Case Study Week 5: Zanele Dube’s Weather Prediction Text

Questions on scenario

1) How can she use technology (formats, hosting) and licenses to achieve what she wants? (Answer for your own jurisdiction)

These seem like two different scenarios. For the first, involving making her work on weather prediction available to her students online for comment, a wiki or blog with a CC license seems like the best option. In this way, students can participate either by editing the work directly in the case of the wiki, or leaving comments in the case of a blog.

In the second scenario, concerning sharing materials with an individual colleague, I would suggest that either email, or some kind of password-protected information management system would be the best mechanism. In this way, the copyrighted materials are not being widely distributed, and an argument can be made for personal use and fair dealing.

2) What licence or licences would be appropriate for her to use on the work? (Answer for your own jurisdiction)

For the first scenario, Professor Dube’s concerns about people profiting from her work could be managed with one of the more restrictive Creative Commons licenses, such as BY-NC-ND. This will also limit modifications of her work, which will reduce the possibility that people will use it in ways she objects to. This would limit the usefulness of her work by others, however, and it would not qualify as an Open Educational Resource, but after she tries the more restrictive license and finds that nothing bad happens, perhaps she would be willing to consider a more open license that would expand the impact and reach of her work.

For the second scenario, the licensing options for the works that the professors created together are limitless. If they want to make the works widely available for reuse and remix, the Creative Commons Attribution license would be best. If Professor Dube’s concerns from the first scenario also apply here, then a more restrictive license like BY-NC-ND would be better.

3) How does copyright law affect the cross border transfer of each of the materials listed? (Answer for the jurisdiction listed)

As use of the Internet increases globally, cross border transfer of copyrighted materials is more common than ever. Unfortunately, there is no international standard for copyright to facilitate this. While Copyright Exceptions and Limitations (CELs) can be claimed in some cases, they depend on the location where the work is created, the origin of the copyrighted material, and on the jurisdictions of the “downstream users” of the resulting materials. As a result, using CELs can be problematic for works that will be used globally. While our group is not as familiar with African copyright laws, these would have to be respected in each instance of cross border transfer. In Zanele Dube’s case, the five specific copyright scenarios are listed below:

(1) A copy of a recent research article authored by one of Professor Mashaba’s post graduate students.

(2) An electronic copy of an article published in an all rights reserved journal that Professor Dube’s university library has made available in the university intranet under a license from the publisher.

(3) A scanned version of an article which Professor Dube has used under fair dealing.

(4) Lesson notes from Professor Dube which incorporates photographs used under copyright exceptions.

(5) Tsonga translations of the 1-4 prepared by the Professor’s working together.

Assuming the absence of an open license for the first case (the research article by the post grad student), each of these five cases involves the use of materials under a location-specific CEL (in the second case it is actually a limited license between the article publisher and Professor Dube’s university library). Because each case relies on CELs, cross border transfer of each of these materials could result in copyright violations.