What are the copyright ramifications as more material goes online?
The Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization by Peter Hirtle gives a useful overview of the act.
The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act of 2002 expanded the ability of educators at nonprofit institutions and at government agencies to display and perform copyrighted digital works in their teaching. Specifically, the TEACH Act created new exemptions to copyright that allow educators and government agencies to digitize copyrighted works in certain narrow, carefully defined, circumstances.
Even prior to the passage of the TEACH Act, Section 110 of the Copyright Act contained an exemption that allowed educators to display and perform any copyrighted work during the course of face-to-face teaching in a classroom in a nonprofit educational institution. There was also a provision that would allow the synchronous transmission of instruction through cable or satellite television to another classroom.
The TEACH Act amended Section 110(2) of the Copyright Act to permit the use of digital technology for the transmission and to remove the requirement that the use of the material had to be concurrent with a classroom lecture. There are a number of requirements that institutions and government bodies that wish to utilize the TEACH Act exemption must meet. For example, use of the material is still restricted to mediated instructional activities. Schools must take measures to try to protect the material from downstream reproduction. They must limit access to the
material to students enrolled in a class. And they must also have copyright education programs in place.
Assuming that the basic requirements of the TEACH Act are met, educational institutions may make copyrighted work available in digital form. They may even digitize material that is not already available in digital form in a format free from technological protection measures [17 U.S.C. § 112(f)]. The type of works, the amount that can be digitized and delivered, and the amount of time that the institution may keep the work on its servers are all limited, however.
Works and uses in digital form that are permitted by Section 110(2) include:
- The performance of an entire nondramatic literary or musical work (such as reading a poem or playing a symphony
- The performance of a limited and reasonable portion of any other work (such as a film or play)
- The display of any work in an amount comparable to what would be used during the course of a live classroom session.
Any copies made under the TEACH Act can only be retained and used by the institution or government body solely in support of instruction authorized by the TEACH Act. One cannot, for example, digitize material for use in a specific course and then later decide to make it generally available on a Web site. Certain uses, such as creating electronic reserves or course packets for a course, are not eligible for TEACH Act exemptions [17 U.S.C. § 110(11)]