How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
At the launch of one of the early online open educational resources (OER) in 2002, the approach to addressing copyright was uncertain. Did the university or the faculty own their material? How would the third-party material be handled? Was all of its use considered fair use under Section 107 of the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Clemson University Press
2019
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121199 |
| _version_ | 1826196532713488384 |
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| author | Weeramuni, Lindsey |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Office of Digital Learning |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Office of Digital Learning Weeramuni, Lindsey |
| author_sort | Weeramuni, Lindsey |
| collection | MIT |
| description | At the launch of one of the early online open educational resources (OER) in 2002, the approach to addressing copyright was uncertain. Did the university or the faculty own their material? How would the third-party material be handled? Was all of its use considered fair use under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (Title 17, United States Code) because of its educational purpose? Or was permission-seeking necessary for this project to succeed and protect the integrity of faculty and university? For many years, this OER was conservative in its approach to third-party material, avoiding making fair use claims on the theory that it was too risky and difficult to prove in the face of an infringement claim. Additionally, being one of the early projects of its kind, there was fear of becoming a target for ambitious copyright holders wanting to make headlines (and perhaps win lawsuits). It was not until 2009 that the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare was written by a community of practitioners who believed that if fair use worked for documentary film makers, video creators, and others (including big media), it worked in open education as well. Once this Code was adopted, universities and institutions were able to offer more rich and complete course content to their users than before. This paper explains how it happened at this early open educational resource offering. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:28:07Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/121199 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:28:07Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Clemson University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1211992022-09-30T21:24:03Z How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Weeramuni, Lindsey Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Office of Digital Learning Weeramuni, Lindsey At the launch of one of the early online open educational resources (OER) in 2002, the approach to addressing copyright was uncertain. Did the university or the faculty own their material? How would the third-party material be handled? Was all of its use considered fair use under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (Title 17, United States Code) because of its educational purpose? Or was permission-seeking necessary for this project to succeed and protect the integrity of faculty and university? For many years, this OER was conservative in its approach to third-party material, avoiding making fair use claims on the theory that it was too risky and difficult to prove in the face of an infringement claim. Additionally, being one of the early projects of its kind, there was fear of becoming a target for ambitious copyright holders wanting to make headlines (and perhaps win lawsuits). It was not until 2009 that the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare was written by a community of practitioners who believed that if fair use worked for documentary film makers, video creators, and others (including big media), it worked in open education as well. Once this Code was adopted, universities and institutions were able to offer more rich and complete course content to their users than before. This paper explains how it happened at this early open educational resource offering. 2019-06-03T18:54:35Z 2019-06-03T18:54:35Z 2019-03 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2473-8336 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121199 Weeramuni, Lindsey. “How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” Journal of Copyright in Education & Librarianship 3, 1 (March 6, 2019): 1–21 © The Author en_US https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v3i1.9751 Journal of Copyright in Education & Librarianship Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/octet-stream application/pdf Clemson University Press Weeramuni, Lindsey |
| spellingShingle | Weeramuni, Lindsey How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt |
| title | How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt |
| title_full | How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt |
| title_fullStr | How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt |
| title_full_unstemmed | How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt |
| title_short | How to Fight Fair Use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt |
| title_sort | how to fight fair use fear uncertainty and doubt |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121199 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT weeramunilindsey howtofightfairusefearuncertaintyanddoubt |