N.B. The Orange & Yellow Groups recently merged into the Amber group.

Week 5 Case Study Text

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

Australia

As with week 5, Professor Dube should use a rights sheet to keep track of the items. She has some options by utilising technology to achieve the preferred outcomes. There are a number of learning management systems (LMSs) available that require students and teachers to authenticate in order to access these “virtual classroom” environments. The listed material could be contained within a LMS. Alternatively another ‘closed’ website such as wiki that requires login and only provides access to teachers and students could also meet the ‘virtual classroom’ criteria.

In order to make the materials publicly available online, Prof. Dube would have to contact the copyright holders (the post graduate student, the publisher of the journal article, the publisher of the scanned article, and whoever owns the copyright of the photographs) to obtain an appropriate licence or permission. Also the Tsonga translations would be considered an adaptation under the Copyright Act 1968 section 10 adaptation means (i) a translation of the work. So permissions would be required.

South Africa

Before making her teaching materials available digitally, Professor Dube would have to clear the rights of the materials by contacting the copyright holders and asking their permission to either make it available digitally herself through a specific licence granted by the rights holder, or gaining access to an online version already made available by the copyright holder. She would also have to get express permission from the copyright holders to scan the article and digitise it and to translate the materials, as these are considered adaptations and are not permitted under South Arican copyright legislation without permission from the copyright holder. Articles published in all rights reserved journals are typically not freely available online or for republication by others online. In this instance she could self-archive a pre-print version of the article and make that available online.

In order for her students to be able to access and leave comments on her teaching materials, Professor Dube would have to make the materials available online (rather than just electronically on a CD or flash drive). Given her concerns about how other may use the materials, she should make it available in an uneditable format such as pdf on the internet in a content management system or a learning management system, or locked down in a ‘closed’ wiki or on a website. Given that her students are her primary target audience, she could opt for an university intranet system that would give only the students access, but then she would not be able to share the materials directly with Professor Mashaba online.

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

Australia

For her own works there are some licensing options to suit her needs. To protect the work, but put it up on the internet, I suggest a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License located at: http://creativecommons.org.au/licences. Alternatively in the vocational education sector in Australia there is the AEShareNet licences while there is a number of them, the AEShareNet-FfE – Free for Education http://www.aesharenet.com.au/coreBusiness/ would enable the works to be shared for educational purposes while ensuring attribution, with no derivatives and no commercial use. Duel licencing may also be an option.

South Africa

Professor Dube can only determine the licencing for the materials of which she owns the copyright. The others will be determined by her agreement with the copyright holder and fair dealing and exceptions under the copyright act in South Africa. She could rely on traditional copyright protection for her work, as she does not want to allow others many freedoms in using her materials. However, it does seem that she does want to allow others to copy the materials. She could therefore apply a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence. The attribution requirement will ensure that she is attributed as the author and copyright holder. The non-commercial requirement will ensure that others do not use her work to make money. The no derivatives requirement will ensure that others will have to ask her permission before they use it in any other way than just as is, which would let her know and control how others are using her work.

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

As we have discussed throughout this course, copyright law differs across borders. The most problematic areas of copyright when sharing across borders is in the realm of copyright exceptions & limitations (CEL), more specifically in what what is eligible for copyright and fair use / fair practice / fair dealing. For example, one country may afford databases of facts strong creative expression and another country may say the database is just facts and therefore not creative. Another example would basic line graphs or bar charts which are considered creative expression in one country and may be in another. We have already discussed on multiple occasions that fair use / fair dealing / fair practice differs in each country – both within and outside of the classroom.

The Creative Commons Unported licenses are one of the most compatible methods for sharing copyrighted materials across borders. The unported license has been constructed in accordance with the Berne Convention, a copyright treaty signed by most countries.

Andrew Rens (one of our course leaders) has written a great paper for the IDRC on the topic of cross-border CEL. His title is “Implementing WIPO’s Development Agenda: Treaty Provisions on Minimum Exceptions and Limitations for Education”: http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-141335-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html