Introduction
This article offers an analysis
and perspective on the legal status of rights and responsibilities in respect
of teaching and lectures and their changing constellation with the advent
of the internet. Specifically, this article is written in view of one specific
dimension in the multifaceted world of e-learning: the rise of commercial
lecture notes companies on the internet (see Blumenstyk 1999; Levy 1999;
Steinberg 1999). These notes companies appeal to students to sell their
lecture notes of courses taught at colleges and universities and post them
on the internet. The companies are privately owned and are not affiliated
with any educational institution. Typically, also, the notes are bought
from students without permission from the instructor of the class. The
companies mostly offer the notes for free and operate on a for-profit basis
through revenues derived from website advertising.
The world of e-learning is
constantly changing and consists of a multitude of different forms and
manifestations. Amongst many other issues, e-learning involves voluntarily
(and often freely) provided information, offered by private individuals
and organizations oriented at the distribution of knowledge in a variety
of subject matters; distance-learning programs that provide courses on-line;
and so-called online campuses or virtual colleges that offer instruction
and degrees on the internet. In addition, various internet sites provide
support to education in the form of information sites that guide prospective
students and their parents in choosing a school; on-line companies that
sell textbooks, office equipment, furniture and just about every other
thing students may be interested in; and sites with instructional tools
and learning aids, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. Discussing the
phenomenon of e-learning, it is important to acknowledge the variability
of its dimensions and to not conflate all forms of internet-based education
with one another (Deflem 2000b). Instead, one should carefully delineate
the various forms of online learning and discuss their respective merits
and limitations. My comments in the remainder of this article specifically
pertain to legal issues of intellectual property in connection with online
notes companies that distribute lecture notes of courses taught at colleges
and universities on the internet.
The objectives of this article
are to unravel the legal status of teaching in order to protect the educational
rights and duties of students and teachers in their college or university
against the intrusion of commercial notes companies. At the same time,
I acknowledge that the legal issues involved with unauthorized lecture
notes is not an argument in the debate on the merits and problems of these
practices. Instead, arguments against unapproved notes services must always
be educational, particularly inasmuch as they relate to the rights and
the responsibilities of instructors over their classes, including the manner
of presentation.
As I have argued at greater
length elsewhere (Deflem 2000a, 2000c, 1999), the most serious drawback
with unauthorized notes is the loss of autonomy and responsibility that
the online service involves in student-teacher relationships. No matter
the effects, such practices constitute an unwanted intrusion into education.
Furthermore, there is on the part of the companies also a serious lack
of quality standards and accountability in providing notes. Worse still,
several of the notes companies detail a user agreement that includes the
explicit disclaimer that no guarantees are made on the quality of the notes
and that the company cannot be held liable for any mistakes in the notes.
Hence, as is the case with any form of e-learning, the potential and real
dangers do not relate to the online technology or internet-based infrastructure
as such, but primarily concern the quality of instruction and the educationally
appropriate use of whatever means are available and relied upon in teaching.
Because of the serious educational concerns involved with unapproved notes
services, it is appropriate to look at the relevant regulations that our
legal system provides as useful instruments to protect the respect and
dignity of student-teacher interactions which we value from an educational
viewpoint.
Focusing on the phenomenon
of online notes companies and the strategies that universities and colleges
need to develop and have already developed, my analysis will offer a clear
presentation of the legal issues involved. I will conclude that a variety
of legal devices can be developed and implemented against an improper use
of online notes. Of the several options available, the ones most likely
to be effective, I will argue, are for educational institutions to develop
explicit policies in terms of copyright, academic freedom and privacy,
and/or trust and contract.
This article is structured
as follows. I first offer a brief historical review of the most important
court cases that have so far decided on the legality of college and university
lectures. Then I review the legal conditions of U.S. copyright law and
offer an application in the matter of notes companies. I will also defend
the position that the practices of commercial lecture notes companies are
highly problematic in terms of a number of other rights secured in our
legal system, specifically academic freedom and breach of confidence. I
will separately comment on the relevance of these issues for current and
developing university policies and federal and state legislation, also
in relation to the rise of distance education programs organized by colleges
and universities.
1. Law and Education:
A Brief Legal History of Teaching
The relevance of law in matters
of teaching has been recognized for a long time. Dating back to the early
19th century, concerns have especially been raised in relation to the rights
and duties in teachers and their students in the setting of a classroom.
Though e-learning is evidently different from classroom interactions in
physical and other respects, it is worthwhile to review these elements
of legal history because their basic premises and underlying principles
are still, albeit differently, relevant today.
Trust and Contract: Abernethy
v. Hutchinson (1825) and Its Legacy
The earliest instance to
discuss lectures in a legal context involved an English court case, Abernethy
v. Hutchinson (1825), in which a surgeon, named Abernethy, brought action
against the defendants, Hutchinson, Knight, and Lacey, who had published
some of Abernethy’s medical lectures in the journal The Lancet.
The judge presiding over the case, Lord Eldon, argued that lectures should
either be considered in terms of property or as a matter of trust between
the teacher and his students (Abernethy, p. 1315). The judge decided to
only rule on the matter of trust and held that there was an "implied contract"
between the students and their teacher (p. 1313). Students who took lecture
notes and sold them for profit, the judge argued, should be held liable
"on the ground of breach of contract or of trust" (p. 1317). Students admitted
to the lecture could according to the judge take notes "only for the purposes
of their own information," while "[a] person who attends oral lectures
is not justified in publishing them for profit" (p. 1313).
The Abernethy case has served
as precedent in several later court cases (e.g., Board of Trade v. Christie
Grain 1905; International News Service v. The Associated Press 1918; Miles
Medical Company v. Park & Sons 1911). The Abernethy case has also been
relied upon in cases that expanded the original ruling. In Caird v. Sime
(1887), for example, the House of Lords ruled that the lectures delivered
by a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow enjoyed
common law copyright protection. Likewise, in Nicols v. Pitman (1884),
common law copyright was granted to a teacher’s lecture. In the first case
on lectures before a U.S. court, Sherrill v. Grieves (1929), the
Supreme Court of the District of Columbia held that an instructor
who taught for United States Army officers held a copyright to his lectures.
The instructor had written a textbook on his lectures, but prior to the
book’s publication, U.S. military authorities had already printed a pamphlet
that incorporated the instructor’s teachings. The court ruled that the
teacher, not his employer, owned the copyright to his lectures because
he was not obliged to reduce his lectures to writing as part of his work
for the military authorities.
Copyright and Unfair Competition:
Teaching Laws in the 20th Century
In more recent times,
there have been several additional court cases involving the copyright
of lectures and oral presentations. Among these is Public Affairs Associates
Inc. v. Rickover (1959), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that Vice
Admiral Rickover owned the copyright to speeches he had delivered, even
though those speeches were part of his work for the Navy. Likewise, in
King v. Mister Maestro (1963), Martin Luther King moved for a preliminary
injunction restraining 20th century Fox Record Corporation from selling
phonograph records of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech and from otherwise
infringing the copyright King claimed for the speech. The court held for
Dr. King on the grounds that there had been no general publication.
The most important case
that gave copyright to lectures in college until today is Williams v. Weisser
(1969). This case involved a suit against a commercial provider of lecture
notes, the company Class Notes owned by Weisser, which had been selling
notes of a course taught by an anthropology professor at UCLA. When the
professor objected to the lecture notes of his class being copied, published,
and sold by the company, he sought permanent injunction and damages. Relying
on several of the prior cases on lecturing (including Abernethy v. Hutchinson
[1825], see Williams, p. 736-740), the court judged in the professor’s
favor on the grounds that: "1) defendant infringed plaintiff’s common law
copyright in his lectures; and 2) defendant invaded plaintiff’s privacy
by the use of plaintiff’s name" (Williams, p. 730). On appeal to the case,
the higher court affirmed the lower court ruling and held that the teacher
owned the copyright to his lectures: "the lecturer retains a property right
to his words spoken before a limited audience" (p. 731). Furthermore, the
court argued that oral delivery of lectures in a classroom is not a general
but only a limited publication for the registered students (p. 741).
In the case of University
of Florida v. KPB (1996), the University of Florida brought action
against a company that published study guides for classes of the university.
The owner of the company hired students attending the university to
take lecture notes, which it then marketed to the student body. The court
decided by jury for the publisher on the grounds that even if the
publisher’s use of numbers, places, and times of course meetings in its
study guides created a likelihood of confusion, the publisher was not liable
to the university under the unfair competition provision of the Lanham
Act under Title 15 of the U.S. Code. Only judging on the matter of unfair
competition, the court denied motion for summary judgment as to the University
of Florida’s copyright infringement claims.
Finally, in the case of Arica
Institute v. Palmer (1991), a U.S. District Court in New York decided against
the Arica Institute, a not-for-profit educational institution, in its suit
against a former instructor of Arica who had published a book on the same
subject matter as was offered in the Institute. The Institute had brought
charges on the basis of copyright infringement, violation of the Lanham
Act, and on the basis of unfair competition. The court ruled against the
Arica Institute because it judged that the matters discussed in the instructor’s
book and in the training programs were not copyrightable. Furthermore,
the court ruled that the book and the training programs shared no substantial
similarity and that the book’s contents was otherwise a matter of fair
use.
2. Establishing the Copyright
of Teaching
More than 150 years ago,
the judge in the case of Abernethy v. Hutchinson (1825) already understood
that granting copyright (or the right of property) to lectures was "a question
of mighty importance" (Abernethy, p. 1317). Legislation and jurisprudence
on copyrighting in the United States may count among the most difficult
legal entanglements, further complicated by the fact that federal laws
on the matter have undergone important transformations. Before I discuss
the ramifications of copyright for teaching, it is useful to untangle its
legalities in some detail (see Miller 1981; Nimmer 1971; Nimmer and Nimmer
1978; Burgunder 1995; Nicholson 1956; Latman 1962).
U.S. Copyright Law From
1909 to 1976
Until 1976 the United States
had a dual system of federal copyright law, specified in the Copyright
Act of 1909 in Title 17 of the U.S. Code. The 1909 Act granted copyright
protection to all original writings by an author. Among these copyrighted
works, the 1909 Act explicitly listed: "(a) Books; (b) Periodicals...;
(c) Lectures, sermons, addresses (prepared for oral delivery)... and many
other works, such as compositions, movies, and art works" (1909 Copyright
Act, Title 17). Also, a distinction was made between common law copyright
and federal (or statutory) copyright. Common law applied before publication
and federal copyright regulated works after publication.
In 1976, U.S. Congress introduced
a new Copyright Act that went in effect in 1978. The 1976 Act made federal
copyright applicable from the moment of creation, not publication, of any
work within the scope of the statute. The moment of creation was determined
by fixation of a work in a tangible medium of expression. Specifically,
the Act states that a work is fixed "when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord,
by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable
to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for
a period of more than transitory duration" (Title 17 §102). The 1976
Act took into account the development of new media of data storage (such
as the internet) by extending copyright to all "original works of authorship
fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed"
(Title 17 §102).
The Teacher Exception
to the Work-for-Hire Doctrine
In matters of copyright law
and education, legal scholars have most often addressed the question whether
the works created by an instructor or teacher as an employee of a school
belong to the teacher, or whether they belong to the school as employer.
This query relates to the fact that the 1976 Act specified a so-called
work-for-hire provision, which holds that a "‘work made for hire’ is; (1)
a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment;
or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned... if the parties expressly
agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered
a work made for hire" (id. §101). A review of the literature shows
that a large majority of legal experts and authorities agree that the teacher
exception is implicitly guaranteed in the 1976 Act (see Borow 1998; Chew
1992; Dreyfuss 1987; Holmes and Levin 2000; Meyer 1998; Patel 1996; VerSteeg
1990, 1996; Wadley and Brown 1999).
The position of an implied
teacher exception in the 1976 Copyright Act is defended because the 1976
Act was not enacted to surpass the 1909 Act but was instead primarily meant
to deepen and explicate the prior provision. Hence, because under the 1909
Act the work-for-hire doctrine was explicitly not applicable to teachers,
it would follow that it still is so today (Nimmer and Nimmer 1978; Dreyfuss
1987; VerSteeg 1990; Lape 1992; Meyer 1998; Patel 1996). A related argument
in favor of the teacher exception is that not accepting a teacher exception
to the work-for-hire provision would create undesirable consequences. VerSteeg
(1990), for instance, argues that it does not make sense to give teaching
copyrights to universities, because teachers moving from one school to
the next would not be permitted to use materials they had developed at
a prior school (VerSteeg 1990:408). Likewise, Dreyfuss (1987:603) relies
on principles of academic freedom and the tradition of professional authorship
in the academia to conclude that employer authorship is a fiction in the
university.
Several courts have accepted
and applied the teacher exception. In Williams v. Weisser (1969), for instance,
the judge argued that the copyright of lectures must belong to the teachers,
because "[p]rofessors are a peripatetic lot, moving from campus to campus.
The courses they teach begin to take shape at one institution and are developed
and embellished at another" (pp. 734-735). In Hays v. Sony Corporation
of America (1988), Judge Posner also acknowledged the teacher exception
and used the undesirable consequences argument, referring to the "havoc"
that would be created if the exception was not accepted, additionally making
reference to "the absence of any indication that Congress meant to abolish
the teacher exception" (Hays, p. 416).
The discussion on the teacher
exception to copyrighting is useful inasmuch as the debate does not deny
that teacher’s works are copyrighted, the only question being who the owner
of the right is (the teacher or the institution). The important question
that now needs to be addressed in the context of this article’s theme is:
Do the copyrightable works produced by teachers and professors in educational
institutions include their lectures?
Lectures as Fixed Forms
of Expression
The 1976 Copyright Act does
not grant copyright to "any idea, procedure, process, system, method of
operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in
which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work"
(id. §102), but only to certain forms in which facts and ideas are
presented (Needham et al. 1998, p. 219). To determine copyright protection
under federal law, therefore, a clear distinction must be made between
the form in which something is expressed and the idea of the expression.
Since the 1976 Act assigns copyright only to works fixed in a tangible
medium of expression, legal commentators have suggested that lectures "as
orally delivered presentations" are not copyrightable under the federal
provision (Burgunder 1995:187). Importantly, however, this does not mean
that any and all lectures are not protected by copyright under any and
all circumstances. In the Arica (1991) decision, the Supreme Court argued
that federal copyright "protects an author’s particular expression of an
idea" (Arica, p. 1062).
There are reasonable grounds
to argue that teacher’s lectures in educational institutions are copyrightable
on the grounds that they are by their very nature always a specific and
fixed form of expression. The copyrightability of lectures can be defended
taking into account the provisions of the 1976 Act on the status of ideas
and facts, on the one hand, and the nature of educational lectures, on
the other. Educational lectures are granted copyright because they are
specific expressions that cannot be dissociated from the form in which
they are delivered. Indeed, lectures in educational settings, especially
those conducted by qualified instructors at accredited institutes of higher
learning, are never oral expressions as such, but are always prepared and
delivered in a particular form with various accompanying materials, such
as written notes from which teachers lecture orally, written text on blackboards
and over-head projectors, images and sound recordings, maps and lesson
plans, and textbooks and other scholarly writings on which lectures are
based. In fact, to conceive of a lecture in an educational institution
as a mere oral delivery of ideas and facts is readily counter-intuitive
to any sound conception of academic teaching. This was already clear in
Abernethy (1825), where the judge observed that the teacher had written
down "a great mass of writing" for his teaching and that the lectures he
gave were "though not verbatim the same as his notes and writings, yet
were in substance, arrangement, and statement of the facts, substantially
the same" (p. 1315).
In sum, it makes sense to
accept the court’s argument in Williams v. Weisser (1969) that "[u]niversity
lectures are sui generis," i.e. expressions of a specific kind (p. 735).
The classroom in an institute of learning, indeed, is not a forum of participatory
democracy but a purposively designed setting with a particular functionality
and division of labor. The key to teaching and learning is not a transmission
of mere information but of information that is appropriate relative to
specified educational objectives. In the Williams (1969) case, lectures
were also seen from this viewpoint when the court suggested that there
is "a distinction between what is taught and how it is taught... What is
at stake here is not any ownership in the subject matter... but the concrete
form in which plaintiff has cast the subject for pedagogical purposes"
(p. 732).
The notion that educational
lectures are specific has already received judicial support. For example,
in Baker v. Selden (1879), the Supreme Court held that for some works it
applies that "their form is their essence" and that "their essence consists
only in their statement" (pp. 103, 104). Granting copyright to lectures
on this basis also relies on the greater protection that the courts have
granted to unpublished (but fixed) works. In 1991, the U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York, for example, argued that because
lectures "are unpublished, they are entitled to greater copyright protection
than published works" (Arica, pp. 1066-1067). And, finally, it is to be
noted the 1976 Copyright Act should again be seen as a deepening of the
1909 Act, which explicitly granted copyright to lectures. In sum, as James
Richardson, the President of the American Association of University Professors,
argued, a professor’s lecture is "developed by that professor and represents
the synthesis of thought of a trained professional. Thus a lecture is...
a creative product" (cited in Levy 1999).
Fixating Lectures
Supposing that it would be
denied that lectures in educational institutes themselves are copyrightable
because of their specific form and that it would be true, as Wadley and
Brown (1999:n.6) argue, that "oral classroom lectures, without more,...
would not be protected by copyright," not all legal protections would be
exhausted. In that case it is still true that any fixations of lectures
are copyrighted, as are all the fixed materials that accompany the preparation
and the delivery of the lectures (Borow 1998; Harper 1999). Fixating lectures
would immediately grant copyright protections to the teacher. As the court
argued in the case of Town of Clarkstown v. Reeder (1983), the teacher
exception provides that "‘if a teacher elects to reduce his lectures to
writing, the teacher and not the institution employing him owns the copyright
in such lectures.’ [quoting Nimmer on Copyright]. This result is compelled
by the nature of our educational system" (Town of Clarkstown, p. 143 n.3).
Fixation of lectures also
applies to tape recordings of lectures by sound and/or video recording
equipment. For instance, a legal brief in the case of University of Texas
v. Walter Camenisch (1981), argued that students taping lectures should
"sign agreements that they will not release the tape recording or transcription
or otherwise hinder the professor’s ability to obtain a copyright." And
indeed many schools require students who wish to tape lectures to ask for
permission from the instructor. The copyrights of taped lectures are protected
by the 1976 Copyright Act, which states that "[a] work consisting of sounds,
images, or both, that are being transmitted, is ‘fixed’ for purposes of
this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with
its transmission" (Title 17 §102). These copyright protections also
apply to all fixed materials that go along with the preparations for and
delivery of the lectures, such as textbooks and maps.
Supplementing Federal
Copyright Law
Assuming that all previous
reasoning would not have been successful in defending the viewpoint that
lectures can be copyrighted, it would still not necessarily follow that
there are no copyright protections of lectures. First, the 1976 Act only
pertains to federal statutory copyright, but still allows for states to
supplement the federal Act with other copyright provisions based on common
law. As Nimmer and Nimmer (1978) argue, the 1976 Copyright Act made copyright
law in the United States primarily federal, but state law can still fill
numerous gaps not explicitly governed by the federal regulation. Thus,
as Melville and Perlman (1998) accurately state, "[u]nfixed works... are
left to whatever protection state law may accord" (p. 364).
A supplementing law at the
state level would enable a stricter and more specific copyright that explicitly
protects unfixed works, including lectures in educational settings (Harper
1999). As VerSteeg (1996) states, a teacher is the "‘author’ of the lecture"
and a state’s common law may still grant appropriate copyright (VerSteeg
1996:1353-1354). Lectures could receive copyright protection at the level
of the state either by enacting new state laws that explicitly accord common-law
copyright protection to lectures or by testing existing state laws in the
courts as implicitly already granting such protection. In the state of
California, for instance, copyright regulations recognize rights in the
representation or expression of original works that have not been fixed
in a tangible medium of expression (California Civil Code section 980).
Common law protection of
lectures, finally, could also be guaranteed by developing university guidelines
on the copyrights of lectures and/or by individual instructors assigning
copyrights to their lectures and related materials. For instance, a copyright
notice —including the symbol ‘©’ and/or the word ‘Copyright’ followed
by the year of publication and the name of the owner of the copyright (Title
17, § 401; Needham et al. 1998:333)— can be included in teaching syllabi.
Also, a university policy can specify a list of copyrightable works that
specifically includes "tests, exams, class handouts, lesson plans, lectures
and lecture notes, outlines, and educational units" (VerSteeg 1990, p.
414).
Implications for Notetaking
Supposing that lectures,
fixated lectures, and/or lecture materials are copyrighted by federal and/or
state law, the implications include that students can take notes of the
lectures they attend for their own use, to prepare for exams, and for private
use not necessarily directly related to their formal training and/or after
their formal education is done. However, students would not be permitted
to sell their notes for profit or otherwise use them in ways that would
interfere with the teacher’s copyright.
Hence, the practice of students
selling notes to notes companies can clearly not live up to the standards
of fair use as specified in the 1976 Copyright Act. In the federal act,
fair use is only allowed upon consideration of the following relevant factors:
"(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is
of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the
nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the
portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the
effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted
work" (id. §107). Assessing these factors in the case of commercial
notes companies reveals that, with respect to purpose and character of
the work, these companies are profit-oriented businesses that post notes
that have been bought from students. In the Williams (1969) case, the court
had already left no doubt that the publisher of notes was "a businessman
who, for personal profit, was determined to pursue a certain course of
action even if it meant riding roughshod over the rights of others" (p.
744). The fact that lectures have purely educational goals increases the
severity of the copyright infringement. Another consideration of fair use,
the effect of the copyrighted work for the potential market of the copyright-holder
is also readily affected, for the fact that notes companies also copyright
the posted lecture notes puts the teacher in competition with the fruits
of his own teaching.
Most delicate perhaps is
the fair use provision of the 1976 Copyright Act which stipulates that
the "amount and substantiality" of the work based on the copyrighted work
is an important concern. As the U.S. Supreme Court recently argued, "fragmentary
words and phrases do not exhibit the minimal level of creativity necessary
for copyright protection," but "[e]xtensive paraphrasing plainly constitutes
copyright infringement" (Arica, pp. 1063, 1066). In this respect it is
important to note that the online companies typically present the notes
as a student’s interpretation of the lectures and not the professor’s notes.
However, such a disclaimer by the companies does not, of course, mean that
in actual fact the notes that are offered are not indeed representations
not of a student’s interpretations of a lecture but of the lectures themselves.
For while some of the notes companies have their note-takers sign contracts
that specify that they "cannot record lectures, write out the lecture verbatim
or copy anything from handouts or directly off a chalkboard" (Levy 1999),
the companies do not specify any standard on which notetakers would need
to rely to direct their supposed interpretations.
In the Williams (1969) case,
the judge also noted that there was "substantial similarity between the
lectures and the notes published" (p. 731). In fact, at least one of the
online notes companies encourages notetakers to "write down everything
the teacher writes on the board —record all technical facts, names, dates,
equations, diagrams, and examples" (Studentu.com website). Under these
circumstances, the notetakers and providers of online notes companies will
be hard-pressed to argue that the notes are original works. For as the
Supreme Court argued in Feist v. Rural Telephone Service (1991), in order
for a work to not be an infringement of some other work’s copyright, "a
work must be original to the author," meaning that "the work was independently
created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that
it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity" (p. 345).
Claims that notes are a student’s
interpretation on a site that advertises lecture notes as a useful educational
tool represents nothing short of a contradiction in terms. For lecture
notes, if they are be to be helpful to the students, must by definition
offer an accurate representation of the professor’s words and viewpoints.
Any other conclusion would not make sense on the basis of the fact that
a teacher does not deal in ideas and facts as such but in very specific
representations thereof, tailored towards the audience of students in very
precise ways.
Moreover, even if the lectures
would not be copyrightable, then notetakers selling notes of lectures to
online companies may still be violating the copyrights of the fixed materials
that teachers use in their lectures, for the latitude that is granted in
the educational setting of the classroom on the basis of the fair use specifications
of the 1976 Copyright Act would no longer apply (Miller 1982:15). The 1976
Act states that there is no infringement of copyright in the case of a
"performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course
of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution,
in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction" (Title 17 §110).
In other words, a teacher in a classroom can more liberally use copyrighted
materials, but these cannot be used in like manner in writings, notes,
and other fixed work based on the lectures. By implication, then, students
selling and posting notes from a teacher’s lectures would the copyrights
of fixed materials used by the teacher. And though the internet is a novel
means of communication and data storage, it is not free from copyright
protection and other legal issues and limitations (Amos and Kim 1998; Holmes
and Levin 2000; Needham et al. 1998; Litman 1997). According to Needham
and co-authors, for instance, "an educational institution may transmit
a lecture over the Internet complete with copyrighted pictures to illustrate
the lecture if the transmission is for students attending classes remotely"
(Needham et al. 1998:264). Needless to argue that such fair-use provisions
do not apply outside the educational setting.
3. Academic Freedom and
Privacy
There are other avenues apart
from copyright that can provide legal safeguards to our teaching and learning
on the basis of principles other than those justifying property rights
in authored works. Among the most central principles in the context of
education is the right of academic freedom. And closely related thereto
is the privacy right of the instructor.
Teaching and Academic
Freedom
Academic freedom refers to
the free pursuit of knowledge and the right to unfettered inquiry and dissemination
of knowledge, including the absence of restraints and pressures that inhibit
the freedom of scholars to study, discuss, and publish ideas and opinions.
Academic freedom is not only an important educational principle, it has
also been recognized in the courts as protected under U.S. law. In Sweezy
v. New Hampshire (1957), for example, the United States Supreme Court ruled
that a college professor could not be compelled to testify about the content
of his lectures on the grounds that the freedoms safeguarded by the Bill
of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment are essential in the community of
American universities. Specifically, Chief Justice Warren justified the
court’s decision by stating: "The essentiality of freedom in the community
of American universities is almost self-evident... To impose any strait
[sic] jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities
would imperil the future of our Nation... Scholarship cannot flourish in
an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust" (in Sweezy 1957:250). In the case
of Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New
York (1967), the same principle was expressed when the court stated that
academic freedom is "of transcendent value to all of us and not merely
to the teachers concerned... ‘The vigilant protection of constitutional
freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools’"
(Keyishian 1967:603; quoting Shelton v. Tucker 1960). More recently, in
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978, p. 312), the court
also held that academic freedom "long has been viewed as a special concern
of the First Amendment." In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court again relied on
the principle of academic freedom when Justice Stevens defended a dissenting
opinion with reference to "the interest in protecting the academic freedom
of university faculty members" (Central State University v. AAUP 1999,
p. 1166).
The legal implications of
a recognition of academic freedom are of several kinds. First, some experts
have argued that the teacher exception to the copyright work-for-hire principle
can be primarily derived from the principle of academic freedom. Indeed,
in the previously discussed context of copyrighting lectures, Dreyfuss
(1987) follows the Williams (1969) court in recognizing an academic tradition
that supersedes provisions of federal copyright laws and argues that copyrighting
should also apply in the academic community in which interests primarily
pertain to the pursuit of knowledge. Thus, Dreyfuss states, "the concerns
that flow from an intellectual commitment range far beyond the purely financial
and may have only a fragile connection to economic expectations" (Dreyfuss
1987:604). Copyrighting, therefore, should extend "beyond [interests] that
are purely financial" and include "interests in the quality and integrity
of the scholarly works" (pp. 592-593).
Arguing for the copyrightability
of lectures in educational settings on the basis of academic freedom also
makes sense on constitutional grounds. For copyright is mentioned in the
United States Constitution with explicit reference to scholarship and learning:
"The Congress shall have power... [t]o promote the progress of science
and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors
the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" (U.S.
Constitution, article 1, section 8). The Supreme Court has also affirmed
that the constitutionally guaranteed copyright is intended "‘for the encouragement
of learning,’ and was not intended for the encouragement of mere industry,
unconnected with learning and the sciences" (Baker 1879, p. 105, citing
Clayton v. Stone & Hall 1829).
Furthermore, even if academic
freedom is not accepted as a basis for copyright, it could still be relied
upon to legally secure student and teacher rights in education. Dreyfuss
(1987) and Meyer (1998), for instance, argue that academic freedom can
be viewed in terms of the constitutionally protected freedom of expression
guaranteed by the First Amendment. As such, it can be argued that not accepting
the view that professors own the copyright to their works could cause their
speech to be "impermissibly chilled" (Dreyfuss 1987:600). With the recent
controversy over online notes companies, some instructors have indeed said
that they do not wish the words of their lectures drawn out of the context
of their classroom to be spread on the internet where they are available
in much more unrestricted fashion. Therefore, also, instructors granting
permission to post notes for their classes on the internet could lead students
and other viewers of the posted notes to assume that notes posted on a
website may have received —or should receive— approval of the instructor
who teaches the class. This danger was already recognized by the Williams
(1969) court, in which the judge argued that "[a]ny person aware of the
cooperation given by other faculty members could reasonably believe that
plaintiff had assisted in the final product" (p. 742).
Additionally, academic freedom
could also be relied upon to justify, as Robert Gorman argues, the "law
of unfair competition dealing with misappropriation" (Gorman 1963:1571).
A provision based on unfair competition relies on the premise that the
students who sell their notes and the companies that post them have "appropriated
the fruits of [an instructor’s] labor" (Meyer 1998).
Finally, academic freedom
can also be relied upon to legally protect teaching as a matter of privacy
and publicity, an option that many legal specialists have defended (e.g.,
Kramer 1990; Shorr 1995; Zimmerman 1992; Lacey 1989; Rahimi 1995). This
perspective emphasizes that academic freedom implies a recognition of the
teacher’s autonomy in teaching, including an autonomy over how the lectures
and the teaching materials are presented and a right of publicity over
anything that is presented by others in explicit relation to the teaching
assignment, including the selling and distribution of lecture notes by
attending notetakers.
Teachers’ Right to Privacy
The right to privacy has
a long history in U.S. law (Kramer 1990). In a seminal paper on the matter,
Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis (1890), argue that the privacy right is
particularly important to be recognized under circumstances of modern society,
when the protection of life has come to mean much more than merely protecting
a person’s physical well-being (p. 196). The privacy right, the authors
argue, secures for "each individual the right of determining, ordinarily,
to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated
to others" (p. 198). Interestingly, Warren and Brandeis relate the right
explicitly to all kinds of personal expression, whether they be published
(or fixed) or not: "The existence of this right does not depend upon the
particular method of expression adopted... It may exist independently of
any corporeal being, as in words spoken" (pp. 198-199). From a recognition
of the privacy right follows that no one but the person who expresses a
thought or produces a work has "the right to publish" (p. 199).
Applying a privacy right
in the context of teaching would evidently be of great importance to the
practice of unapproved postings of lectures notes. A perspective of academic
freedom in terms of privacy and publicity makes sense in view of the fact
that teachers and professors want to spread their knowledge as much as
they can but always in a manner they judge to be appropriate and wise.
As Dreyfuss (1987) argues, teachers have a stake in the reputational interest
that "turns on how [their] work is presented to the public" (Dreyfuss 1987:605).
Clearly, when lecture notes are posted without the teacher’s permission
or even in explicit disregard of the teacher’s wishes, a serious condition
of academic freedom is being violated. From a practical viewpoint, granting
teachers a privacy right in their teaching would lead to develop and/or
test appropriate state or federal laws. As Zimmerman (1992) aptly argues,
"courts are quite capable of commodifying unfixed forms of expression by
using instead such doctrines as the right of publicity and privacy protections
against appropriations" (Zimmerman 1992:696).
4. Contract and Breach
of Confidence
A possible downside to the
previously suggested legal provisions that can be called upon to protect
our teaching is that they posit the teacher in an adversarial relationship
relative to the publishers and companies that provide unauthorized notes
as well as (some of) their students. As such, these strategies may be helpful,
but they can never be more than a necessary evil. To avoid the implied
adversarial positioning of students and teachers, the option can be suggested
to protect our education legally in terms of breach of confidence, trust
and contract based on principles that already guided the Abernethy (1825)
case. This option has the advantage of being both feasible and practical
in the context of the academic community and, additionally, of not having
to rely upon a separation between students and teachers. Instead, it presents
a way to protect the relationships that exist between students and teachers
relative to unwanted intrusions from third parties.
Breach of confidence or trust
was a central principle in the Abernethy (1825) case and similar judgments
that were connected to educational values pertaining to academic freedom,
privacy, and implied contract. In Prince Albert v. Strange (1849), for
instance, rights of teachers were protected as part of "the more general
right of the individual to be left alone" (Prince Albert 1849). The implied
contract between students and their teachers involves rights and duties
on the part of both parties. Implied contract in the Abernethy (1825) case
was related to the specific setting of the classroom in an educational
institution. The judge referred to the fact that students attending the
lectures had signed their name in a book specifically available to show
classroom attendance and that they had paid a fee to attend the lecture
(p. 1313). Therefore, the lectures were considered as clearly "not in any
way open or accessible to the public" (p. 1315).
Similarly, in Caird v. Sime
(1887), the court concluded that "where the persons present at a lecture
are not the general public, but a limited class of the public, selected
and admitted for the sole and special purpose of receiving individual instruction,
they may make any use they can of the lecture, to the extent of taking
it down in shorthand, for their own information and improvement, but cannot
publish it" (pp. 347-348). Importantly, as I stated before, the restricted
and specific nature of the educational setting of classroom teaching has
also been recognized by the federal lawmaker in justifying certain provisions
and, especially, certain exceptions in the 1976 Copyright Act (see the
fair-use exceptions for teaching purposes as mentioned in §110 ["in
a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction"] and §107 ["copies
for classroom use"]).
Recently, legal experts have
applied the breach of confidence argument to teaching and the rights to
instructors’ works (e.g., Dreyfus 1987; Vickery 1982; Donat 1997; Chong
1998). Dreyfuss (1987), for instance, argues that although the copyrights
of lectures are uncertain, publishing lectures by attendants would be held
liable as "unauthorized use" under state laws related to breach of confidence
and contract. Confidentiality in teaching and research is implied by the
collegiality between professors and teachers (to not copy their works from
one another) and by the specific relation between student and teacher (in
matters of teaching) (Dreyfuss 1987:634).
Finally, as the judge in
Abernethy already realized, a provision on breach of confidence would hold
"particularly where the contract is written" (Abernethy, p. 210). Thus,
breach of confidence could be more easily invoked in the case of online
lecture notes if and because explicit university policies are in place
that detail and protect the mutual rights and responsibilities of teachers
and students, including the rights and duties that pertain to teaching
and learning during classroom lectures as important matters of academic
integrity. Contracts could also be worked out by individual instructors
when they arrange the requirements and agreements that govern their classes,
for instance by including specifications in their teaching syllabi. In
any case, whether contract is implied or explicit, guided by university
policy or per individual class, breach of confidence provisions more clearly
posit the adversaries of teaching outside the academic community.
5. Putting Law Into Practice:
Responding to Notes Companies
Since lecture notes companies
began to appear on the internet in the Fall of 1999, the phenomenon has
received increasing exposure and attention in the media and the college
and university community. Although there has been some dissension on the
issue, the general response has been very clearly opposed to the distribution
of unauthorized lecture notes. Many professors and teachers have spoken
out on their educational concerns and have relatedly argued for appropriate
policies to protect their rights and responsibilities as qualified instructors.
Strikingly, also, the negative response that came from the student community
was overwhelming. This has been especially clear from the many critical
reports that have appeared in the college press and the editorials that
warned against the dangers of unauthorized notes (e.g., Brown Daily Herald
2000, Yale Daily News 2000). Most arguments from teachers and students
against this aspect of the commercialization of their education relate
to the quality of instruction and the respectful relationships students
and teachers should be able to enjoy. More organized efforts, moreover,
have been taken by professional associations, such as the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP), which includes teachers’ rights over their
lecture notes in its "Statement on Copyright" (AAUP website). Additionally,
private initiatives have also sought to coordinate efforts against unauthorized
notes companies. The current author, for example, has been conducting a
website campaign in order to organize information on and educational opposition
against commercial notes companies (see "Free Education Now!" website).
Several colleges and universities
across the country have developed —or are in the process of developing—
policies that prohibit the sale of lecture notes altogether or that prohibit
the sale of notes without the instructor's permission. The latter policies
are typically based on intellectual property rights and are the most common
type of regulation. Policies that ban the sale of unauthorized lecture
notes exist at the University of California
campuses,
Iowa State University, Michigan State University, University of Vermont,
and others. The policy at the University of California at Berkeley, for
instance, states that "[s]elling or distributing course lecture notes,
handouts, readers or other information provided by an instructor, or using
them for any commercial purpose without the express permission of the instructor"
is an academic violation (UC-Berkeley policy
online). A similar policy at Iowa State University states that "[s]tudents
may take written notes or make other recordings for educational purposes,
but specific written permission to sell the notes or recordings must be
obtained from the presenter" (Iowa State University website).
Other, stricter policies
are based on academic honesty and the regulation of commercial relations
of students and faculty. Typically, these policies ban the practice of
notes companies altogether. Such policies exist at
Yale,
Harvard, and Princeton. For example, the Harvard University policy specifies
that "[s]tudents who sell lecture or reading notes, papers, or translations
or who are employed by a tutoring school or term paper company... may be
required to withdraw" (Harvard University website).
Similarly, the policy at Princeton University states that "[s]tudents may
not engage in the publication or sale of abstracts or transcriptions of
the lectures or required reading in any course of instruction in the University"
(Princeton University handbook).
These various policies have
advantages and disadvantages. Policies based on academic integrity clearly
frame the issue in a purely educational context related to instructional
goals and academic conduct. For example, Richard Brodhead, the Dean of
Yale College (where an academic honesty policy exists), condemned the notes
companies as "a deeply troubling commercial intrusion into our classrooms,
an improper exploitation of the intellectual property of the instructors,
and in many instances a misrepresentation of courses" (Brodhead
2000). But policies based on copyright —while they allow for the distribution
of notes under restricted circumstances that may not always avoid all problems—
have a solid footing in our legal system, whereas policies based on academic
honesty lack such a legal ‘bite.’
Though no court has in recent
years decided on the legality of the sale of lecture notes and the practices
of notes companies, in February 2000, an Alameda County Superior Court
judge issued a permanent injunction barring the lecture notes company ‘R&R
Corporation’ from operating on any University of California campus (Benjaminson
2000). It is no coincidence that this decision was reached in the state
of California, because, as mentioned before, California copyright regulations
also recognize rights over works that are not fixed in a tangible medium
of expression (California Civil Code section 980).
In the meantime, on September
22, 2000, California Governor Davis signed a law that amended the State
Education Code to prohibit the unauthorized posting of class lecture notes
on commercial websites. The law becomes effective January 1, 2001. The
law gives to instructors "an exclusive ownership in any presentation...
in a classroom, laboratory, library, studio, or any other place of instruction,
performance, or exhibition" (State of California,
AB
1773).
Finally, this analysis and
its various considerations are also relevant in the context of distance
education programs. Such programs offer online courses whereby students
and teachers are no longer in the same physical space but communicate with
one another over the internet. Distance education programs are clearly
on the rise in accredited colleges and universities across the country
and, additionally, they are also offered by so-called virtual colleges.
It is primarily in the context of distance education at accredited institutes
of higher learning that there has been debate on the relative merit and
problems of this new form of instruction (see Academe 1999; Dwyer and Li
2000; Martin 1999). Among the questions that have been raised, the potential
lack of faculty input has been suggested relative to the fact that the
decision to offer distance education may primarily come from the administrative
offices of colleges and universities. Besides technical and practical uncertainties
over the implementation of online courses, it is also unclear what principle
primarily drives distance education (market forces or educational objectives)
and who has final decision-making power and oversight over such programs.
A particularly acute question is also how technicians and teachers can
work together to offer appropriate programs and what the consequences are
of such programs, for instance, in terms of quality of student learning
and employment opportunities for instructors.
Distance education programs
have also led to concerns in matters of intellectual property and copyright
policies. The central issue is that with the offering of a course over
the internet certain protections that are typical for classroom instruction
may be lost as the words and wisdom of the instructor go out into the world
of cyberspace, the boundaries of which are unclear. In the context of online
notes companies, I have discussed how similar concerns were raised in terms
of the lack of control by instructors and the potential chilling effects
of the unsupervised and unauthorized distribution of their lectures. The
problem of intellectual property in the case of distance education is that
instructors and professors have traditionally been granted more protections
by their colleges and universities to their research efforts (in the form
of books and articles) than to their teaching. It has happened in the past,
for example, that colleges have used faculty-created video recordings of
classes without the knowledge of the instructor (Martin 1999:35).
Because of the new reality
created by internet-based instruction, new policies have been discussed
and developed. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP),
for example, has developed elaborate guidelines on the proper administration
of distance education programs (AAUP website). Amongst other things, the
AAUP recommendations specify that instructors should retain primary responsibility
for determining the policies and practices of distance education and that
the materials created by instructors for use in distance education courses
should receive the same copyright protections (under the work-for-hire
doctrine and its exceptions) as do other faculty creations.
In the meantime, several
colleges and universities have already changed their polices to accommodate
distance education (Martin 1999). Typically, these policies state that
distance education programs must fit the educational objectives of the
school and that personnel will be trained to provide the necessary technical
support. Importantly, these policies also provide that online courses and
their various accompanying materials are the property of the instructor
and not of the institution where the course is offered. Among the universities
that already have explicit policies on distance education in place are
the University of Texas (Martin 1999:35) and San Diego State University
(SDSU website).
Many other colleges and universities, however, still need to develop appropriate
policies on distance education, so that the intellectual property conditions
of their instituted practices remain uncertain.
Conclusion
This article was not intended
to defend a legalistic viewpoint that assumes that the legal issues involved
with e-learning and other aspects of teaching are exhaustive of their normative
dimensions. On the contrary, education can derive its merits only from
substantive grounds other than the legality involved. However, the law
can be used as an important and powerful instrument to defend rights and
principles, specifically a legally authoritative protection of lectures
against the unapproved online distribution of lecture notes. Copyrighting
lectures, relying on the right to academic freedom, or otherwise legally
safeguarding our rights to teach and learn are no argument, but such legal
provisions can be a useful instrument to protect our rights within a constitutionally
guaranteed framework.
In sum, the following three
provisions can be applied to protect student-teacher relations and their
rights and duties in teaching:
1) Copyright protections
can be ensured, based on the teacher exception to work-for-hire, in one
or more of several ways: a) Lectures can be copyrighted by federal law
when they are considered as specific, fixed forms of expression; b) Fixations
of lectures can be copyrighted by federal law; c) Lectures and/or fixated
lectures can be granted common-law copyright protection by developing or
testing appropriate state laws, university policies, and/or instructor
guidelines; and d) Copyright can be granted to materials accompanying and
used in lectures.
2) Teachers’ constitutionally
protected academic freedom can be relied upon in a variety of ways: a)
To grant copyright to lectures, fixated lectures, or accompanying materials
(as above); b) To invoke First-Amendment protections of free speech; c)
To rely on provisions of unfair competition; and d) To secure the teacher’s
privacy and publicity.
3) Breach of confidence is
involved in distributing and posting lecture notes by implication of an
implied contract (of trust) or written contract between students and teachers
as specified by university policies or teacher guidelines.
Of course, in addition to the
various legal issues that I addressed in this article there are still many
practical concerns and technicalities involved in securing copyright or
other legal provisions at a practical level. For example, universities
that have explicit policies against the sale or unauthorized sale of lecture
notes have sent cease-and-desist letters to companies that violate these
policies. But, in response, the companies have not always decided to terminate
their practices. In any case, it seems clear that without an explicit policy
at the state or federal level, an appropriate judgment by the courts, and
a clear and useful university policy, no organized response will be effective
to protect our education against the invasion of online notes companies
and similar intrusions. Yet, it is equally true that with appropriate legislative
and judicial responses and with a solid university policy that is respectful
of students and teachers alike, our legal system does accord means that
can be applied to preserve instructors’ rights to teach and students’ rights
to learn in an environment freely and decidedly committed to the essence
of education in our society.
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