Copyright and Web 2.0 publishing
The advent of blogs, wikis and the 'social web' means everyone with an internet connection the ability to share information and resources with the world. And, given that it can take a few clicks to re-use an image, a section of text, or a video, it is more vital than ever for us to understand our rights and responsibilities as creators and users of copyright material. The tension between web 2.0 - designed for users to share information - and copyright - which vests total control with the creator of a work - is a very challenging legal area.
This page seeks to explain what you need to keep in mind if you are publishing material on the internet and is particularly aimed at staff of the University. In the context of tertiary education, there is an important distinction to make at the outset, as explained under the following two bold headings.
Publishing within a restricted environment
If you are publishing material that within Blackboard or within the University's blogging service (using the password-restricted option) you are working within an educational context, which allows you the rights to reproduce materials afforded by the special licences the University has and by the provisions of the Copyright Act that allow copying for certain educational purposes. Essentially this means you can copy for your students any of the types of material detailed in the coursepacks page.
Publishing where others can access material (not staff and students)
If you publish via a more open medium (like YouTube, Twitter, UniTube, or even the University's own blogging service without the password option) then you no longer have these permissions outlined above granted automatically. This is because the University's licences only grant permission to copy materials for students enrolled in the relevant course of study. And you are not able to draw on the provisions of the Copyright Act for copying for educational purposes because those provisions only allow communication to your students.
If you publish via an open medium, in theory, anyone in the world can access the material you post. Facebook or similar media, where you can restrict access to a set of people you define, would not be acceptable because this would still give access to non-students (unless you set up a group resricted to your students).
In order to understand what you can put on a blog or other site that people other than students and staff have access to, familiarise yourself with the following:
- Your rights as a creator of material: this applies to any of the original material you create and upload.
- Your responsibilities as a user of others' copyright material, which applies to anything you did not create.
- Copyright and the web: including how to work out if you can use material you find on the internet.
