Copyright and Course Management Systems

Abstract

An overview of U.S. and UK Copyright legislation reveals that fair use/fair dealing guidelines do not directly address the use of copyrighted materials in course management systems. Although many colleges and universities develop and share their own guidelines, there is no consensus among those institutions or between those institutions and pub lishers. Research on the use of copyrighted materials with course management systems is lacking and, together with the absence of legal or professional association mandates, li brarians and institutions are open to charges of copyright in fringement. This situation is problematic for universities and may be fueling the trend toward Open Access publication of university research. This paper reviews the existing codifi ed guidelines for fair use of copyrighted materials from the 1970s through the present, some legal challenges that have oc curred, and how some of the larger universities are cur rently handling the questions of fair use and licensing as they pertain to course management systems. In addition, a rec ommendation is made for research to bring the parties closer to an accepted set of guidelines.