From copyright police to a valuable gap filler. Vanessa Tuckfield. Digital Repository Manager, Canberra Institute of Technology

Transcription

1 From copyright police to a valuable gap filler Vanessa Tuckfield Digital Repository Manager, Canberra Institute of Technology Abstract In April 2012, the World Intellectual Property (WIPO) Magazine published an article called Understanding Copyright - A Life Skill. This thought provoking article highlighted the need for a better understanding of copyright in society. Maria Pallante, the United States Register for Copyright said in the article: It s one of those life skills now, right? When you graduate from high school or college, you should know how to read a map, you should know how to use GPS, you should know a little bit about copyright. If you are somebody who is going to be in a field where you will encounter copyrighted materials all the time, you should know more. As technology constantly improves and allows more and more individuals to digitally copy resources and content in all its formats, there are waves of new people that require a basic understanding of copyright. Libraries have been copyright aware since the 1970s and are well placed to meet these waves of people and provide copyright education programs. Copyright education can add value to an organisation by providing a high level of awareness. This makes it possible for organisations to avoid legal challenges, and if they do arise, to be better able to respond to them. As such, education supports cost-effective risk management. Aside from the legal and financial considerations, boosting copyright awareness also opens the door to greater creativity and productivity in a workplace, by allowing employees to understand their rights and their obligations and exploit them appropriately. Nationally, copyright in education has been a concern since 2003, with the Commonwealth government funding copyright education programsthe Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) started its copyright education programs also in 2003, then in 2009 CIT implemented a resource repository. As every teacher can contribute to the repository, every teacher must be copyright aware. The CIT Library s role as copyright educators has been critical in the successful repository implementation. This paper reviews CIT s copyright awareness programs since 2003, the waves of changes that allowed a resource repository to be built, and the intangible effects this has had on the whole organisation.

2 The pervasive use of the internet means that almost every industry today utilises copyright material Tradespeople copy plans and safety sheets. Office workers in Australia copy material from the internet for use within their workplaces. Musicians, actors, architects, designers, IT consultants, film makers and landscapers all use copyrighted material, and rely on copyright law to protect their incomes. Maria Pallante s quote highlights this changing need for awareness of copyright law. In every career you are taught the laws, rules and regulations of the industry you intend to enter. Who is teaching the copyright rules? In the seventies, the photocopier enabled education and business sectors to copy copyrighted works, so the libraries in these organisations had to learn copyright rules. In the eighties, personal computers and the internet became the norm around offices and a new wave of people needed to understand copyright, as they copied documents and distributed them. The nineties saw the PC and internet migrate into the personal space, and what was done in the office was now being done at home. In the new century, copying has become the norm all over the place and not just text but music and film. The digital environment pervaded almost every part of our lives, and though copying is normal, some is perfectly legal and some is not. Understanding the boundaries requires education and training; and libraries can provide this service. Through this historical progress, libraries have been at the forefront of copyright knowledge. In the seventies, educational librarians learnt the copyright rules relating to copying in the education environment. In the eighties, government and private librarians learnt the copyright rules related to copying in the office, business, and government environments. In the nineties, public libraries helped many private citizens understand the copying rules in the home. But there has been no systematic approach to helping them understand these copyright rules. In this new century there are myths, rumours, and a whole news environment happy to sensationalise anything to do with copyright. Library environments are well placed to assist users of copyright material to understand their rights and obligations, simply because they have been at it longer than anyone else. I raise this as a think piece only - where can the average person go to get general assistance on copyright matters that is not biased and sensationalised? Copyright is also a very contextual subject. How the rules apply does depend on the industry you are in, and the intended use of the material, so this can be confusing for many. The library environment is usually seen as a safe place, which can provide balanced individual assistance that cuts through to the basic information an individual needs. In the business environment, copyright represents both risks and opportunities. The risks include inappropriate use of copyright material which can lead to legal action for infringement. While the exact costs of copyright infringement will vary depending upon the facts of each case; the figures usually supplied are over $60,000, or five times that amount along with gaol times. Any figure represents a financial cost for the organisation, but the intangible cost to the organisation as being identified as a copyright infringer can be much more damaging to reputation and brand attachment. The opportunities are also there, whether they are the legislative provisions to enable limited copying such as fair dealing, or purchased licenses that enable a range of copying. Alternatively, to meet the digital copyright challenges there are immediate licences available for a range of uses, if you understand the context of how you will use the material. As every business environment is different, it is hard to generalise. However, for many organisations, understanding the copyright context and what you can do may enable more copying to happen.

3 In the education environment, copyright plays an important part and it is one of the major areas of legislation that educators need to be aware of in the current digital age. In Australia, under the Copyright Act 1968 (as amended), educators have a range of options open to them in using copyright material. It is one of the more complex copyright environments to work in. Educational institutions are required to negotiate with copyright owners about the use of their material in education. The idea is that copyright owners should be adequately compensated for the use of their material, and copyright owners are identified so they can receive that compensation. The statutory licenses are used when a teacher / librarian distributes copied material to students. The statutory licences were implemented over forty years ago. In that time a lot has changed in education, technology, copying technology and social expectations, so huge challenges exist for these statutory licences today. For forty years, libraries have been managing photocopiers and copyright, including any statutory licenses their institutions may have. For the first 10 to 20 years this worked perfectly because the main copying functions were still centralised in the library areas. But creep occurred. Slowly but surely technology moved on at different rates in different organisations. PCs (Personal Computers) and their attached printers became the norm in the staff rooms, so teachers no longer needed to come to the library to reproduce copyrighted materials. Then access to the internet was given, and we could all search for knowledge and experts from all corners of the globe. Teachers became even less reliant on library staff as they could find their own resources on the internet. Today there is no need to print the material and hand it to students. The online classroom in all its forms has enabled teachers to digitally hand material to their students with ease. CIT was no different; suddenly copying was no longer happening in the library. All staff in the organisation were suddenly capable of copying, printing and dispensing copyright owners materials to students and today huge amounts of copyright material can easily be handed to students via the online classroom. I was employed by CIT in 2002 because the Institute had struggled to meet its copyright statutory license surveying requirements and needed to improve its compliance. The copyright function was managed through the library, even though most copying was occurring out in the teaching faculties. The first step was to ensure that compliance was being met properly - simple things such as reviewing the Institute s copyright policy and putting up copyright notices at all printers in the organisation, not just those managed by the library.. CIT intended to take copyright compliance seriously. It was important that the copyright education programs were well supported by management, and they were. Then we went out to the faculties. For managers we used a 'this is the law, you can be sued methodology. It was a hard line approach, but initially, it was needed. Once CIT staff were clear on CIT s intent, we then moved on to how we could help, what they needed to do the job properly, sessions with teachers, handouts, and making it clear that the library was here to help but were not responsible. This approach protected the organisation, by ensuring it had undertaken reasonable steps to educate all staff on copyright requirements, and clearing up many myths that existed about copyright in the educational context. Initial discussions quite often centred on concerns about ownership of CIT staff-developed materials; this was an ongoing concern in the early days. Soon after, teachers starting asking for assistance in delivering copyright training for their students - not just for the usual students rights and obligations under copyright, but also sessions about copyright in various industries, such as information studies, media and music. Within the Australian Training Package system, there are a number of intellectual property competencies and these are included in a number of training packages. The

4 teachers asked for our assistance because it was perceived that library staff were not biased in delivering this contextual, contentious subject area. The Library s role as copyright educators for the entire organisation, not just for the staff that came into the library, has proven a winner for CIT. The tangible benefit of assurance for management is that CIT is doing all it can to protect itself from any claims of copyright infringement. Staff understand what they can copy, and what they must do when copying, and they also understand what they can t copy. Little steps like notices on every printer and scanner in the organisation, and near banks of computers, was a starting point, then progressing through to copyright sessions for staff, and then optional online courses. Soon copyright education will be rolled out as part of CIT s online induction course for all new staff. In 2006, CIT explored the possibility of a repository of resources used in the teaching process, but CIT wasn t quite ready to put all its documents into one place. The resistance was so strong that it never developed past a set of meetings. In 2008, CIT underwent another copyright sampling and this time, the survey went as smoothly as a sampling survey can go. There were no major concerns this time, demonstrating CIT s improvement in copyright understanding. The library continued to deliver its training programs and work with CIT teachers and staff. In late 2008, along with a review of the learning management system, CIT explored a repository again, and this time CIT staff were ready was spent developing a repository, it was piloted with a small group of staff in 2010, and went live with a new Moodle based learning management system and Pearson Equella based repository in The library staff make purchased resources available for all teachers to use. Teachers contribute their resources, from simple documents through to videos and complex learning exercises. In the background, library staff also check the citations on all third party material used in the teaching process and apply appropriate copyright licenses to the material. This provides ongoing high quality copyright management, ensuring that during copyright sampling surveys, most of the work has already been done. This repository has proven to be extremely valuable. The staff have contributed over 70,000 resources to the repository, clearly demonstrating the creativity and diversity of CIT teachers and staff. The repository now allows CIT to manage copyright on third party materials, a huge change from CIT was copyright sampled again in 2012, and again CIT passed without too many concerns. The repository has met its requirements, and is considered a success now. There have been a huge range of intangible benefits. Some identified benefits are: Saving considerable IT resources, as the system does not store duplicate copies of resources; Increasing professionalism, as it is less likely that older versions of resources will continue to be used, as it is easier to locate current resources: Saving staff time, as staff can find resources developed by colleagues, instead of trying to develop their own: and Increased team work, as teaching staff and library staff work even closer together. The intangible benefits for the library have been: Working with the teachers who had previously never come into the library:

5 Less tension, as library staff are no longer seen as copyright police but experts who can assist teachers to meet their copyright obligations; and Increased use of the library, as teachers have requested more library skills sessions for their students, including referencing skills sessions. While the application of copyright licenses to teaching resources had initially been contentious, it has now become an accepted part of daily library activity. Wonderful new things have happened - there are new relationships between staff and teachers, and teachers are now comfortable to contact the library with quick questions. Now that CIT as an organisation is comfortable with the place copyright has in its daily operations, the library staff are no longer seen as copyright police, but more as partners with the teaching staff when working with digital objects. With high staff turnover in the vocational education sector, the copyright sessions will continue. In particular, the fact that all new staff receive their copyright in context training during induction ensures that all staff recognise copyright requirements for our industry. I have heard it said that copyright law does not change that much, as there have been only a few amendments over the last 10 years or so, but the environment we work in is changing at a rapid rate. The ability to copy, technology and social attitudes all continue to progress. The result is the need to apply copyright law to a changing environment. While it is easy to get caught up in the hype of what copyright law should be, the reality is that the laws exist and they do need to be adhered to by any organisation. There is a gap in copyright education, whereby it is assumed that everyone knows their copyright rights and obligations, but actually many do not. Libraries are held in high regard within their organisations, as they are unbiased and able to assist all staff. This provides an opportunity to provide a service of training staff on both their rights and obligations, and filling that gap. Bibliography Commonwealth, Crimes Act 1914 No. 12, 1914 as amended Start Date: 29 Jun 2013 Commonwealth, Copyright Act 1968 No. 63, 1968 as amended, Start Date: 15 Apr 2013 Copyright Law Committee, Report on Reprographic Reproduction (1976) (the Franki Report), [6.40]. Harris, Lesley Ellen, WIPO Magazine: Understanding Copyright - A Life Skill,