4. The work I want to use in my online class is both copyrighted and free of any license. Are there any specific provisions of the copyright law that apply to online classroom use?
Yes, Section 110(2) of the copyright law (otherwise known as the “TEACH Act”) specifically applies to displaying images, playing motion pictures or sound recordings, or performing works in your online class. Since this section applies to any “transmissions” of performances or displays, cable television classes would also be included here.
There are a number of institutional and faculty member obligations that must be fulfilled in order to use the TEACH Act. Consult your library or university counsel on whether and how the TEACH Act is implemented locally. If your university cannot or does not wish to comply with TEACH Act obligations, consider whether what you have in mind for your online course is a fair use. (See question #5, below.)
If you wish to explore the TEACH Act option, read on for a description of a faculty member’s obligations.
Generally, to perform or display a work in your online class the work must be
used under your supervision
as part of the class session
as part of systematic mediated instructional activities (see 4j, below)
directly and materially related to the teaching content
The work must be lawfully made and not excerpted from a product that was specifically designed and marketed for use in an online course.
Furthermore, there are three additional requirements:
You must password protect or otherwise restrict access to your online class Web site to enrolled students, and
You must reasonably prevent your students from being able to save or print the work, i.e., control the “downstream” uses, and
You must include a general copyright warning on your class Web site.
Judy Brophy on 24 Jun 10"Retrieving legacy files As the old dropbox knew no separation of files by assignment (one of its major limitations), it was not possible to move these files into assignments during the upgrade, and there is no storage area facility available into which they could have been moved, so they are not directly accessible within the application after an upgrade or in courses restored from earlier versions. The old dropbox code used Perl, which has been completely removed from the web application in release 9, so the dropbox cannot be accessed anymore to retrieve the legacy files. A rudimentary Java-based interface is being provided to enable each user individually to download any legacy files they may wish to retrieve. These files can then be submitted in newly created assignments as desired or stored in one's Virtual Hard Drive inside the Blackboard Content System, if that is licensed by the institution and enabled by the system administrator. Unfortunately this interface is not exposed via any link in the application. System administrators or helpdesk staff can however make available such a link to their users, either assisting them with file retrieval on an individual basis or by publishing the download link to their users, e.g. in a system announcement. Community Engagement license holders may also wish to add an HTML portal module with this link, thus simplifying the download process, or add it as external link to the tool panel (in the portal menu column). The location of this interface (relative to your server root) is: /webapps/blackboard/execute/ddb It is important to note that this is not a file system location. You actually have to access the URL via a web browser! Sample HTML for a portal module named something like "Digital Dropbox Download": Download your digital dropbox files here When a user accesses this link, he will either see a message that no files were found for him, or a list of courses in w
