Copyright and Online Learning

Digitizing and showing entire films or audio performances without written permission from the copyright holder is often not advisable. We recognize that there is conflicting information from various institutions that wrestle with this issue, but Carleton’s assessment is that laws that prohibit copying or distributing multimedia works, particularly the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), do not change–even during extraordinary circumstances, such as the Covid Pandemic.
Instead:

• Seek permission from the copyright holder in advance, bearing in mind that this can take some time.
• Select films or audio that are already available online and link to those.
• Work with your Library Liaison to find alternative content that would serve your learning goals.
• Choose brief clips that are more likely to qualify under Fair Use, and work with Academic Technology to deliver those shorter clips to your students. As usual, PEPS will require documentation of your Fair Use analysis before they can reproduce multimedia works.

If it is legal to share slide images, video clips, and audio files in a physical classroom, it is likely legal to show them to students online via video conferencing or in your recorded video lectures–as long as your new course video is being shared through course websites that limited access via login to registered students.

Best Practices

• Limited access to enrolled students in the class.
• Avoid broad permissions for uploaded media such as “Public” or “Anyone with the Link” or “Available to Anyone at Your Institution,” as it could allow students to distribute those files/links beyond your class.
• Set sunrise/sunset dates, when possible, that limits access to days/times within the specific academic term.
• Remind students they should not share copyrighted materials outside of class.
• More information on limiting student access in Moodle is available here.

Best Hosting Options

Moodle, Panopto, Imagen, and Google Drive are good, Carleton-supported, options for uploading your instruction content because they allow you to easily restrict access to ONLY those students who are enrolled in your course. This restriction aids your Fair Use analysis significantly and allows you to make decisions as if you were teaching face-to-face (except in the case of multimedia works, as discussed above).

Other Hosting Options

While you can upload videos to YouTube and the like, it is more likely that you will encounter automated copyright enforcement such as a takedown notice or disabled audio or video content. These automated enforcement tools are often incorrect, and they can be appealed, but they may add unnecessary complications to your process.

Carleton’s Copyright Policy affirms that faculty, staff, and students own the copyrights for their academic works, including instructional content and submitted coursework.