Courts always regard the use of copyrighted material for educational purposes as a fair use.

Introduction: Promises and Risks

For distance educators the Internet is a land of infinite possibility. It provides the opportunity to connect learners, resources, and teachers in ways our predecessors may have only dreamed. It is now possible to make entire courses, programs, and degrees available for the distant learner through computer technology. The promises this new environment holds are extraordinary. One of the most amazing features of the Internet is the way in which it facilitates the proliferation of information. The user can download, in a few minutes, more information than was contained in entire libraries during Medieval times, and the Internet is growing by leaps and bounds.

These changing times yield both opportunity and crisis. The biggest problem businesses and service providers faced in the past was the hurdle of disseminating information. These days the struggle is very different in nature: the Internet contains a myriad of miscellaneous tidbits of information at the cost of context, content control, and ownership. The resulting disorganization is compounded by yet another logistical headache: the Internet, for many practical reasons, renders obsolete most existing copyright and royalty systems. Once information is made available electronically, it is virtually impossible to control; it can be downloaded, duplicated, given away, or otherwise saved, altered, or sold. One of the biggest challenges facing the further growth of a stable electronic information environment, for economic and other reasons, is that of devising a way to manage user access and address the surrounding copyright and intellectual property issues that confront anyone placing information on the Internet .

The goal of this article is to provide some guidance on copyright and intellectual property issues in the electronic environment. The article will present a brief overview of copyright law, examine case studies and recent litigation in an attempt to clarify issues related to fair use and other copyright issues, and suggest some questions that may help to direct others' efforts in resolving copyright issues in online course environments.

Background

Copyright Protection: The Intent of the Law. Copyright law is grounded in the age of print, and its ideologies are rooted firmly in the philosophical tenets of capitalism and democracy. In the early eighteenth century, beginning with the 1710 Statute of Anne (considered by some to be the first copyright law), knowledge was cut free of control by the church and state and established as "an item of trade in an open marketplace" (Bennett 1993, 87). Later in the eighteenth century, the U.S. Constitution established a copyright clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8) which states that the goal of copyright protection should be to "Promote the progress of science and the useful arts." The purpose of this copyright law was not to provide the creator of a publication with an unending monopoly, but to provide a "limited grant" of protection to the creator in order to allow him or her to reap some reward, financial or otherwise, for his or her labors, and at the same time, to safeguard the free flow of idea s in the public interest (Lehman 1995).

At the time of its inception, copyright law was relatively easy to enforce. Copying was an unwieldy affair involving the operation of numerous complex pieces of heavy and costly equipment, followed by dissemination of hard copy through assorted logistical processes. The printing process was slow, and it was controlled by those who owned the machinery of production—people who became the publishers of textbooks and other printed information. Certainly there was little, if any, concern that the general citizenry, possessing neither the equipment nor the know-how, might print, give away, or even sell unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials.

Changing Assumptions About the Nature of Information. The production and distribution issues affecting copyright in today's society have changed radically. In the 1970s, the widespread use of the photocopier became the first copyright crisis of the electronic age; the general public no longer needed to own the machinery of production or master the printing process to be able to produce and distribute multiple copies of copyrighted materials. These technological advances prodded the government to revise its copyright law with the implementation of the 1976 Copyright Act, which outlined acceptable and unacceptable uses of copyrighted materials. Wincor (1994, 87) rightly observes that "our copyright approach began, and has largely remained, a series of reflexes to the development of new technology, not a declaration of natural law or some other principle supporting the protection of intellectual productions."

As the physical processes of the printing press and the photocopier have given way to the conduits of network proliferation, the electronic revolution in publishing has forced us to confront some very fundamental changes in the established assumptions about the nature of information. The first change relates to the increasing accessibility of information. Bennett (1993, 88) notes the more promising egalitarian aspects of the digital environment:

In some regards electronic scholarly communication more nearly approximates a phone system or a broadcasting environment than a conventional publishing environment. This environment involves and empowers individuals in unprecedented ways in the creation and distribution of information. For that reason, it is an environment that particularly favors the promotion of learning and the democratic uses of knowledge, which are the constitutional underpinnings of U.S. copyright law.

The second change concerns the nature of the publishing process. Publishing has become more "democratic" in the digital age: anyone with a computer can become a desktop publisher; and through the proliferation of electronic networks, those created materials can be dispersed to thousands of people. With computers becoming increasingly prevalent in the modern home and workplace, the machinery of production truly lies in the hands of the people. But an electronic environment which democratizes the publishing process has both benefits and drawbacks: one which encompasses both being that there are fewer keepers at the gates of knowledge. Consequently, there are no standards for what does and does not get published, and no central organizing system to help locate the information. One critic offers the following recommendation: "Information users do not need more, less well-organized information. They need less, better-organized information" (Duranceau 1995, 85). Organization and context are two of the missing gi rders of what politicians have called the National Information Infrastructure, without these supports, the structure may very well collapse under its own weight.

The third major aspect of information that has changed is its increasing mutability. While a publication was previously recognizable by certain parameters of its own physicality, the electronic environment has removed many of the defining features of "publications." When is an electronic item a publication? How can it be determined whether an electronic publication enjoys the benefits of copyright protection? Is a work in progress a publication or a fragment of a publication? Does each draft of an electronic publication—which may be modified daily or even hourly—receive the benefits of full copyright protection that individual drafts (published or unpublished) of a scholarly article currently enjoy?

Fourth, there exists the issue of control of ownership. When information was published primarily in books, it was difficult and time-consuming to alter an author's work. But there is no corresponding physical mechanism to prevent today's computer user from downloading and altering an article and then claiming authorship of it.

What are the implications of these changes for distance educators and other information creators and users as traditional controls on information relax and virtually disappear'? This article will examine some specific situations, beginning with several cases involving lawsuits related to the electronic distribution of information, and then moving into a discussion of some more hypothetical examples, where issues related to ensuring copyright protection and information integrity in the electronic environment can be explored.

Copyright: The Letter of the Law (Examples)

Recent Litigation. Following are a few of the cases involving electronic distribution of copyrighted materials that have been addressed by the courts.

Case 1. In the 1993 case of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena, a federal court ruled that a computer user who posted copies of Playboy photos to an electronic bulletin board was guilty of "public display" of copyrighted materials, and therefore, guilty of copyright violation. "Since Playboy's trademarks were used to identify the photo files, the Court found that Playboy's trademark rights were also infringed" (Bovet 1995, 48).

Case 2. In the case of Sega Enterprises, Ltd. v. MAPHIA, a court ruled that a bulletin board operator to whose bulletin board users posted and accessed Sega video games was contributing to copyright infringement (Tickle 1995, 400).

Case 3. In a 1994 case, MIT student David LaMacchia was charged by a Federal grand jury with "using university computers to distribute more than $1 million worth of pirated software over the Internet." The student used two MIT computers as electronic bulletin boards where "Internet users could place copies of commercial programs, allowing other users to receive illegal copies" (Lewis 1994). The student's lawyer, Harvey Silvergate, argued that LaMacchia, acting in his capacity as owner of the bulletin board, was merely responsible for the maintenance of the technological conduit, and not for the content that it contained, and that LaMacchia should therefore not be held accountable for information that was placed there by other users. Silvergate argued,

Can AT&T be held liable for criminal conversations held on their phone lines? ... Can the New York Times be held liable because gamblers use the information published in its sports section? Of course not. I don't see how you can make distinctions between people who run newspapers, phone lines and computer bulletin board systems (Lewis 1994, A9).

Case 4. A 1995 case involved litigation between the Church of Scientology and Arnaldo Lerma, a computer user who posted several of the Church's top secret, copyrighted documents to an Internet newsgroup. Lerma's computer and disks were seized by the courts pending review of Lerma's alleged infringement. His comments were,

You have to jump through a lot of expensive hoops to get access to this.... This is the big secret at the end of the rainbow, and you could go to the court clerk and get it for 50 cents a page. The Internet is the First Amendment in silicon (Aflen 1995, A 12).

Case 5. In the article "Copycats on the Superhighway," Coleman (1995) describes the following situation in which a publisher unwittingly committed copyright violation. Pacific Hitech, a publisher located in Utah, downloaded a large number of literary works off the Internet. The works, which did not contain a copyright notice, were all literary classics that are currently in the public domain. After downloading them, the publisher, seizing the opportunity to make a profit, put the works on CD-ROMs and began selling them to the general public. Imagine the publisher's surprise when it turned out that "someone had transferred more than 800 works from a CD-ROM published by World Library on its 'Library of the Future,' removed the copyright notice to that electronic version, and launched it into the Internet" (Coleman 1995, 68). Pacific Hitech, the infringing publisher, was forced to "stop selling its version of the works, to destroy its master copies, and to give all unsold CD-ROMs to World Library for recyclin g or destruction." The attorney for World Library issued the following caveat:

Uploading or taking material off of the Internet might be an infringement of that copyright, even though the underlying work may be in the public domain. Unlike trademark law, copyright law has no exemption for innocent infringement (Coleman 1995, 68–69).

The issues related to the definition of liability for Internet users, bulletin board owners, and service providers are only now being clarified. For example, several bills limiting the liability of online service providers for third-party copyright infringements occurring over their networks (S.1146, H.R.3209. and H.R.2180) are pending in the 105th Congress.

Assumptions of Fair Use. All of the previous examples demonstrate that copyright law is one of the more confusing aspects of placing information on electronic networks. But some help is available: Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act sets forth guidelines for assessing fair use of a copyrighted work, many of which can be applied to the use of copyrighted materials in a digital environment. The criteria listed in this section have traditionally been used in court cases where copyright infringement is charged. The four considerations for fair use are as follows:

1. The purpose of the use (commercial or nonprofit);
2. The nature of the work itself;
3. The amount or substantiality of the segment used in relation to the whole; and
4. The effect of the use on the potential market for the work.

Some of these criteria, which were already cloudy during the print age, have become even more nebulous during the electronic age. These criteria will now be applied to some example situations in an attempt to clarify the boundaries of copyright infringement.

Example 1. Joanne Chopak, a professor teaching an online distance course in Literary History at a large research university, wishes to assign her thirty students several poems by an obscure American writer to analyze for next week's class. Instead of requiring the students to purchase the costly anthology in which the poems appear (which the students will probably not use for any other aspect of the class), she reprints the poems on her class home page on the World Wide Web (WWW). Is Professor Chopak's position defensible through the doctrine of fair use?

Applying the criteria of fair use described in Section 107, the following can be ascertained:

1. The use is for a nonprofit educational purpose.
2. The copyrighted work is a work of literature.
3. The poems are reprinted in their entirety.
4. The effect of the use is such that Professor Chopak's students who have access to the poems on the Web will not purchase the anthology from the educational publishing company that produced it. Therefore, placing the poems on the Web could potentially preclude the purchase of the anthology not only by the thirty students in Professor Chopak's section of Literary History, but also by the hundreds, or even thousands, of other people who may stumble across the poems on the Web.

It is fairly clear to see that the use, while not aimed at obtaining any personal financial gain, has violated two of the primary aspects of fair use: the professor has used several works in their entirety (one poem is defined as a complete literary work), and the professor's decision has deprived the educational publishing company of the revenue commensurate with the items' use.

Example 2. John, a clerical employee at a small university, has been charged by the marketing director with the task of creating a "presence" on the WWW for his distance education department. John's friends have assured him that it is very easy to create a new home page on the Web simply by using his Web browser to view the source of any document he likes and then copying the HTML (hypertext mark-up language) code that has programmed the document to appear in a certain format on his computer screen. John browses through the Web for several days, copying and downloading some formatting and several images he has located on other people's home pages. He has not copied items from any pages that contain copyright notices, and believes that everything else is fair game. John is especially proud of an ornate and unique symbol he borrowed from one of the home pages he came across on the Web. When he is finished, John has put together a very attractive home page for his department, using a minimum of effort and a v ery minor outlay of his university's financial resources. Has John violated the copyright doctrine of fair use? Here are his assumptions:

1. The work has been created for the academic department for which John works.
2. The works he borrowed were from electronic works created by other users of the WWW. None of these works contained copyright notices, and so John assumed they were available for free use.
3. The portions of the individual pages that he copied were relatively minute—a photo here, a symbol there—and nowhere did he violate the 10% rule of fair use.
4. None of the home pages from which John borrowed contained any indication that a fee was required for the viewing or use of the information they contained.

What are the copyright issues that John has failed to consider in his pursuit of creating the perfect Web page?

• According to the 1989 amendment of the copyright law, a publication does not need to contain a copyright notice in order to be copyrighted by its creator; therefore, any publication that has been published is a legally copyrighted publication (even original works that have not yet been published are protected), whether it bears the standard copyright notice or not.
• John's employer, a university, could derive some monetary benefit from the presence of the promotional information contained on the Web page that John put together: therefore, his department could benefit financially from work published and owned by other private individuals without their consent. The producers of this information have not received a fair share of any of the profit derived from their work.
• Although the amount of information that John copied from each page was very slight, there is no hard and fast "10% rule" of fair use. The three criteria of "copy rightability" as defined by the courts are "originality, creativity, and fixation" (Lehman 1995). The information that John copied from each page may have been small in amount, but any one of those portions, especially the highly original, creative symbol John located, may have been at the heart of the identity, design, or content of the page from which it came. John may, therefore, have unwittingly violated copyright law.

In the cases described above, lack of awareness of copyright law may have made unwitting violators of the professor and the clerical worker. In both cases, since the potential violation of copyright occurred during the work hours of someone employed by a university, the employers, as well as the individuals involved, are implicated if liability should occur: "The copyright in a work prepared by an employee within the scope of employment vests in the employer, and the employer is the author" (Lehman 1995). In these cases, both employers and employees would be well advised to move cautiously when copying and placing copyrighted materials on the Internet.

Questions to Ask and Issues to Consider

Following are some questions that may help a distance learning organization think through many of the issues related to copyright, the Internet, and distance education. These items can be divided into the following categories: process issues, institutional policies regarding copyright and intellectual property, software and licensing issues, common copyright issues, other alternatives, and several miscellaneous issues (including ethical issues and the need for faculty development).

Process Issues: Playing It Safe. Does the organization employ someone who ensures that all course content written is free of plagiarized material and that all copyrighted items are adequately identified and cleared? Many people are not fully aware of the intricacies of copyright law and may unwittingly use material without properly quoting or identifying a source. At Penn State's Department of Distance Education, for example, it is part of the instructional design staff's responsibility to lay out the rules related to copyright up front, before course development begins. On occasion, designers have come across unidentified copyrighted items imbedded in course materials. In such cases, the designer is instructed to return the material to the faculty member requesting that sources be identified so that permission can be obtained, or that the faculty member re-word those sections, perhaps summarizing key points of the original work.

Does someone in the organization track permissions requested against actual numbers of copies printed or students accessing the materials? It may be surprising to discover that in the most popular courses, permissions need to be re-cleared more often than expected in order to be within legal compliance. A revised course could be considered a "new work," in which case all permissions should be re-cleared for use. Information that should be documented includes the title and author of the work, its original copyright date, the publisher, the date of clearance, the terms of clearance, and the credit line as the publisher wishes it to appear.

Institutional Copyright and Intellectual Property Policies. Is a copyright notice placed on all materials, indicating that they are owned by the department or university? Many users wrongly assume, especially with regard to Internet-delivered resources, that if there is no prominent copyright notice on an item, then the item is not copyrighted. A notice should be placed on all materials for the sake of clarity. A typical copyright statement might be: "Copyright © 1998, [the institution]."

Were any of the course materials produced with the help of an external grant or funding of any kind? If so, the university's copyright and intellectual property issues related to that particular grant or funding arrangement should be examined. Does the university own the copyright on the product? Or does the organization that funded the project own it? Do any of the terms of the grant limit the use, sale, or distribution of any of the content that has been produced? If unsure, a grant officer or office of sponsored programs should be consulted up front concerning the particular terms of the grant or funding.

To prevent misunderstandings, are the copyright arrangements regarding distance-delivered materials spelled out for the content experts (and design teams) in clear language? Significant resources are often devoted to the development and delivery of distance and technology-based course resources. For this reason, many universities copyright materials developed in these formats. For example, all of Penn State's distance education materials are copyrighted by the University. Course content experts sign a contract at the beginning of the development process indicating that they understand that they are developing a course that enter into the copyright domain of the university (copyright which is then registered with the Library of Congress). The copyright agreement specifies the percentage of material from the copyrighted "work" (or course) that authors are permitted to use elsewhere, and specifies when that ownership expires. Such agreements also specify royalty percentages and terms of disbursement. P olicy manuals should be reviewed carefully.

Does the university lump "Web-delivered materials" into the same category as "software" or "courseware"? If so, the university's policies may state that these materials (as opposed to faculty "publications" such as articles or textbooks) are owned by the university. Or, it may be discovered that the university has not yet addressed intellectual property issues related to online course materials. Likewise, it would be wise for employees working on the creation of distance materials to understand the legalities related to the ownership of those materials. For example, what if a designer uses personal photographs, taken on his or her own time, to enhance a course Web site? Do those items enter into copyright? Or should the designer provide, in writing, permission for the use of those materials, thus retaining individual ownership of the items? If the organization's position regarding these or other issues is uncertain, it should be investigated immediately. Copyright and intellectual property lawyers s hould be consulted and any and all copyright-related training sessions should be attended.

Software and Licensing Issues. Will any of the copyrighted items (including software) be distributed internationally? If so, it should be clearly indicated in any and all permissions correspondence that the materials may be supplied to an international audience. Publishers sometimes have different rates and different rules related to the distribution of materials within a country as opposed to materials that may be distributed internationally. Web-based materials have the potential to be accessed by an international audience. If software is being distributed—either by selling it with a course package or by including software applications, viewers, or installers on a course Web site or CD—it must be ensured that the licensing issues related to such software have been investigated. For example, some software makers require that international purchasers of their product buy a "copy-protected" version of the software to prevent easy duplication of such software on the international bl ack market. Copy-protected versions of software usually cost more and are often not as readily available as the standard versions, so these issues should be explored before making software available to students at the time of enrollment. Another option would be to require that students purchase any required software on their own, using contact information provided to them at time of registration. In any case, time must be budgeted into the process to ensure that the student has adequate time to order, purchase, install, and troubleshoot the software before a course begins.

Have the legalities (copyright, licenses, etc.) related to making online resources accessible for distance students been explored in partnership with the university library? One of the hottest items discussed at a recent copyright event was the growth in the use of online reserves for resident instruction students. Although enthusiasm for online reserves runs high, many copyright issues related to such systems remain unclear and are currently being debated between the libraries and the copyright owners. Additional questions are also being raised: if a library places documents on an electronic server, what clearances must be obtained, and what system is in place for tracking usage and passing costs on to the end user? Such systems may present logistical headaches as well. Many such systems are protected by domain screens or Internet Protocal (IP) screens that would render the resources inaccessible to distant students without some kind of user authentication process. These issues should be explored w ith the institution's library, and it should be determined how such systems might best be modified to address the needs of distance students.

Common Copyright Issues. Do content experts provide articles or portions of textbooks they have written, claiming that these items can be used freely because they themselves are the author(s)? In many cases, once an article or textbook has been published, the copyright of that item is taken on, owned, and protected by the publisher, not the author(s). Often, faculty who write articles or books have sold (or signed over) their copyright to the publisher of that item and may be bound by a publisher's agreement limiting the author's ability to redistribute that material freely. Most contracts define a date upon which rights revert to the author. The safest policy would be to request permission rather than to automatically assume that the item in question can be used.

Is "educational use," in residence or distance instruction, considered to be the primary defining criterion of "fair use"? It is wrong to assume that copyrighted items can be used in courses because the courses are designed for an educational purpose. Educational publishers make their living on the profits they earn from the public's book purchases and journal subscriptions. Violation of a publisher's copyright is a serious legal infringement, whether it occurs in the educational or business arena. Distance learning, perhaps more so than most other types of instruction, is generally a premeditated affair. Because distance education relies heavily on resources that have been created by a design team, course development can span weeks, months, or even years of materials preparation. Once created, those materials may have a shelf life of several years (in many programs, a course is offered until a newer textbook edition renders the current course version obsolete). In taking the safest and most conserv ative approach possible, these aspects of the distance education course design process place resource-based, distance courses largely outside the realm of "fair use," although several current bills are attempting to address digital transmission issues related to distance learning (see, for example, section 5 of H.R.3048, pending). Adequate time to obtain permissions should be built into the course planning process. Content experts should be advised, in no uncertain terms that if the publisher of an item cannot be tracked down and permission obtained, the item will not be used. In general, a recommended policy (again, a very conservative approach) is that it is better to be safe than sorry: permission should be requested if the legality of "fair use" in the educational environment is at all uncertain. When in doubt, legal experts should be consulted: the boundaries of fair use, most practically defined, lie at the edges of whatever an organization's lawyers are prepared to defend.

Other Alternatives. Was permission to use an article denied, or was a fee requested that is considered to be prohibitive? The faculty member can summarize key points of the article and include appropriate citations. If the quoted material is substantial enough, the students can be required to purchase copies of the book or reprints of the article, if available.

Are students provided with the most cost-effective and learning-efficient educational resources, even if that means providing the materials in an alternative medium? In the race to make the quickest, most effective, and most profitable use of the Internet, some distance educators assume that the best way to provide all distance course materials is through the Internet. Many faculty members also assume that their course readings packets can be made "cheaper" or "more accessible" for students if readings are provided on the Web instead of in print. This is not always the case, and in fact, many publishers are reluctant to allow copyrighted materials to be stored in any kind of electronic environment, even a seemingly secure environment such as a Web site that is screened and password-protected. Furthermore, other, more practical problems are raised by such an approach. First of these is access. Many students still do not have access to the Internet, and some of the students who do claim to be online u se the Internet at their workplace, where access and printing privileges may be circumscribed. Is it really effective to ask students to print out text-heavy documents (because we all know that nobody reads text-dense materials on-screen; they hit the "print" button every time)? Further, neither can it be assumed that resident instruction students have unlimited access to computer resources and printers. Perhaps the inclusion of copyrighted articles scanned into a Web site is not the most effective way to deliver such materials. Placing these materials on the Web shifts the burden of printing to the consumer, which, in the end, may or may not provide the most effective and efficient course package for the student.

Did a content expert provide an overabundance of items that require permissions clearance, without regard to the impact of those items on the course development timeline and total course cost to the end user? If an institution processes copyright permissions in such a manner as to pass the costs of permission fees along to students, the cost of such packets can be astounding. Simply making the faculty member aware of the consequences of including so many items (increased cost to student, increased time in the development process due to permissions) may be all that is needed to get him or her to pare down the list of copyright permissions to a more manageable few. It can be suggested that the faculty member select only crucial items for inclusion, listing the rest of the items as "optional" or "recommended" readings on the course syllabus.

Does the course require that students refer to current articles in certain, subject-specific journals? Rather than asking for permission to reprint items or place them on the Web, it might be worthwhile to explore requiring students to subscribe to a particular journal for the duration of their coursework. Some newspapers, magazines, and journals are willing to make their publications available at "student" subscription rates that are significantly lower than regular prices if they are aware that the items are being used in an educational setting.

Is another medium going to be included on the Web site—for example, film or video footage spliced into a quick-time movie or shockwave animation? Copyright rules can be different for different media. While tracking down permission to include the famous Bikini Atoll bomb footage on a Physics CD, we discovered the intricacies of film and video copyright: chasing down ownership of footage from PBS, to the federal government, to the camera operator; and then ascertaining whether or not the camera operator was employed by the government at the time, or whether the shoot was a "work for hire" done by another company. We also learned firsthand that even if a musical work is ancient and, therefore, within the public domain, an individual group's performance of that work is protected by copyright. Tracking and clearing such items can be resource-intensive and can slow down the design and development process. Also, there are very practical issues to consider: placing such items on a Web site has the pote ntial to raise the technology bar for the student. Instead of using just a regular browser, the student may now need to locate and install several helper applications and plug-ins. Who will provide technical support and guidance to students unfamiliar with that process? And, in the end, is the instructional benefit provided to the student by such technology worth the costs? Or would the student be better served by simply asking him or her to go to the nearest video store and rent the item in question?

Was it decided, against all good advice to the contrary, to use a copyrighted item whose owner could not be found, after making every reasonable effort to obtain copyright permission? Those efforts should be documented, and any evidence that can be provided to that effect (canceled envelopes, referral letters, etc.) should be kept on file in case a question should ever arise.

Miscellaneous Issues: Ethical Compliance and Faculty Training
Are all other legal and ethical issues covered—for example, in regard to use and display of student work and student participation in research projects (either as researcher or as research subject)? To use examples of "good" student projects in a current or subsequent edition of a course, students' permission should be requested before displaying or reprinting such items. If students are required to conduct research projects that involve the use of human subjects, or if the content experts who author and/or teach the courses plan to use student performances, feedback, or anecdotes in any research or public presentations, those projects should be submitted to the university's regulatory compliance office, which governs the ethical treatment of human research subjects. Students involved in any such projects should sign release forms as should any other research participants.

Does the distance education organization provide faculty development events where legal and ethical issues such as copyright and regulatory compliance are discussed alongside technology and pedagogy issues? One of the most important steps in the copyright compliance process is educating all parties concerned, from designers to graphic artists, to programmers, to faculty, to editors, to administrators, to invested others, about the ideological, legal, ethical, and practical issues related to copyright law. One of the best ways to reach a wide audience at one time is to provide a faculty development event where participants—for example, a panel—are invited to provide a clear discussion of the pertinent issues. Copyright law is a hotly, debated issue in academia and panelists with divergent backgrounds—perhaps a university copyright lawyer, a leading faculty member or two known for their technology innovation, a librarian, several administrators with a stake in the issue, and representat ives from academic publishing—might create a lively debate.

Conclusions

This article began our discussion of electronic copyright issues by examining the promises and risks of the Internet. It concludes with the following brief summary. The Internet has the potential to become a force of great change in our society, but all of the hype and hope must be tempered with a healthy dose of realism. As we move into an increasingly information-based world economy, one premise is true above all others: an information network is only valuable as long as we can ensure the integrity of the information that it contains. In the electronic publishing environment, information integrity is tied in many ways to issues of information production, ownership, and control. The good news is that all can become both creators and consumers; all can help to shape what the Internet becomes. This is a tremendous opportunity, and one that brings great responsibility.

We must be reminded that the original intention of copyright law was not to thwart information usage but to protect the free flow of information in the public interest. To enable that principle to guide us, we must reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the rights of both the producers and the consumers of that information—and, indeed, in the online course delivery environment, we may often find ourselves playing both roles simultaneously. Although the electronic environment offers new challenges to existing copyright law, many of those challenges could be met by providing public education on the appropriate uses of information. Many people who violate copyright law in the electronic environment do so simply out of ignorance. As responsible users of the Internet, we need to educate both ourselves and others about the spirit and the practice of copyright law, which, in the end, is based on mutual respect: respect for both producers and consumers of information, and respect for the value of information itself as a private and a public "good."

Notes

1Ms Colyer wishes to make the following disclaimer: I do not hold a law degree, and make no pretense of being a copyright lawyer. The advice contained in this article is, however, based on more than ten years of experience with the instructional design unit of The Pennsylvania State University's Department of Distance Education. A significant portion of that time has been devoted to overseeing permissions procurement activities and policing copyright/intellectual property issues to ensure that the instructional design unit is in compliance with university policy. The approach taken in this article is, admittedly, an extremely conversative one, a stance with which more liberal proponents of "fair use" will likely take issue. If you have specific questions on copyright or intellectual property issues, I urge you to consult yoiur own organization's lawyers, copyright clearance unit, and/or intellectual property office.

References

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Bovet, S. F. 1995. Legal issues in cyberspace. Public Relations Journal, May, 48.

Coleman, R. 1995. Copycats on the Superhighway. ABA Journal 81:68–71.
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Lehman, B., Committee Chair. 1995. Intellectual property and the national information infrastructure. The report of the working group on intellectual property rights. Information Infrastructure Task Force, September, http://www.uspto.gov/veb/offices/com/doc/ipnii/ipnii.doc.

Lewis. P. H. 1994. Student accused of running network for pirated software. The New York Times, 9 April. Al.

Tickle, K. 1995. The vicarious liability of electronic bulletin board operators for the copyright infringement occurring on their bulletin boards. Iowa Law Review 80 (2): 391–418.

Wincor, R. 1994. Unrest on the frontiers of copyright. Communications and the Law 16 (3): 83–89.

Which of the following would be considered fair use of copyrighted material?

Which of the following is considered a fair use of a copyrighted material quizlet?

What are the 4 fair use exceptions to copyright?

Which of the following uses of copyrighted material would be protected under the fair use provision?