Educators learn about tougher copyright law

Laura Gasaway

7:35 a.m., March 17, 2004--The growth of the Internet has made it easier to violate copyright law, prompting the passing of tougher legislation and the creation of complicated rules, Laura N. Gasaway, professor of law and director of the law library at the University of North Carolina, said during a forum at the University of Delaware March 12.

Gasaway, who has spoken extensively and has written widely on copyright, spoke to faculty, students and staff about “Copyright, Faculty and Fair Use” at UD’s Trabant University Center.

“It’s easier for us to infringe, but it’s also easier for us to get caught,” Gasaway said. “The nature of computers is that they make a copy when you are looking at it on the screen.”

Gasaway said the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act protects the fair use of copyrighted material for teaching, scholarship and research, but distance education through digital transmission still faces significant restrictions.

Gasaway said tougher legislation was welcomed by the music industry, which has been fighting illegal sharing of digital files on the Internet for several years, but its negative impact on education is now being felt.

“What we thought in 1995 was that it would apply only to digital music,” Gasaway said. “We didn’t think about all the implications of the web and how it would affect teaching.”

The law requires that any copyrighted material used for teaching be used only in a classroom setting, and any material posted on the Internet should be password protected to limit access, Gasaway said.

Gasaway advised faculty members to familiarize themselves with the law, limit the amount of work they copy and post only “clean links” to trusted sites, such as those run by government, libraries and selected corporate sites.

“The smaller the portion you copy, the more likely it is to be fair use,” Gasaway said.

Gasaway, who serves as the virtual scholar-in-residence for the Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland, said the copyright law appears to favor large corporations at the expense of teaching.

“What I’m seeing is the government paying attention to these huge corporate copyright holders but not to fair use,” she said. “We have a responsibility to educate the community about the Copyright Act.”

For more information on the subject, visit Gasaway’s web site [http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/gasaway.htm].

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kevin Quinlan

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