In some cases, you can recover significant sums of money. Note that you must first file your copyright registration before you can sue, though you can do this either before or after the infringement occurs. However, as a practical matter, lawsuits tend to have far more power if the registration occurred before the infringement.
You can only get copyright protection for materials that you have fixed in a "tangible medium.". For example, you can copyright your presentation slides or a video recording of your lecture; you cannot copyright your unwritten, unrecorded lectures.
– StuDocu How do I report copyrighted materials on StuDocu? StuDocu is dedicated to protecting the rights of copyright holders, and it is our policy to immediately respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. Complete the official take-down request to request the removal of alleged copyright materials on StuDocu.
As mentioned above, the use of copyright works within educational establishments is allowed either by licensing schemes or copyright exceptions. However, neither the licences nor the copyright exceptions in this field apply outside of educational settings.
To register your copyright, you need to go to the eCO Online System, create an account, and then fill out the online form. There's a basic fee of $35 if you file online. The processing times are generally faster if you apply online, but eFiling still takes between three and four months, according to Copyright.gov.
If the copyright holder is not the author, you have the option of giving the author credit.Look up all author and copyright information. ... Write the title of the song. ... Type the word “Copyright” or place a copyright symbol (the letter “c” with a circle around it) after the title. ... Write the year the song was copyrighted.More items...
2. Are online course materials protected by copyright? Almost all online course materials are eligible for copyright protection. The instant an original, creative work is created and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, the work is automatically protected under U.S. copyright law.
Under the Copyright Act, certain photocopying of copyrighted works for educational purposes may take place without the permission of the copyright owner under the doctrine of "fair use" (set forth in section I. THE COPYRIGHT ACT).
Including one tip from the tutorial would be fair use. Simply republishing the entire tutorial would not be fair use, even if you linked to the original source. Give credit to the copyright holder. In order for something to be fair use, you must give full credit to the person who created it.
If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission.
“under the federal Copyright Act of 1976, a lecture is automatically copyrighted as long as the professor prepared some tangible expression of the content–notes, an outline, a script, a video or audio recording.”
If you have an online course or course curriculum, you can protect this using copyright. Under copyright law, the copyright for a creation belongs to the creator. For entrepreneurs, this is important because copyright law covers any creative work done for your business.
As part of the learning process teachers often use copyright materials to instruct students, and the law provides a number of copyright exceptions for education. This means that in some cases and under certain conditions teachers and students can use protected content without permission of the copyright owner.
In general, the permissions process involves a simple five-step procedure:Determine if permission is needed.Identify the owner.Identify the rights needed.Contact the owner and negotiate whether payment is required.Get your permission agreement in writing.
The Fair Use Doctrine and Education That section of the Copyright Act says that there's no copyright infringement if the use of the material is fair, in other words "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research."
Instructors may not: copy sheet music or recorded music for the purpose of creating anthologies or compilations used in class. copy from works intended to be “consumable” in the course of study or teaching such as workbooks, exercises, standardized tests and answer sheets, and like material.
Publishers are more likely to grant permission when the author is using his or her own work. Therefore, instructors are encouraged, when possible, to use their own work. Publishers are also more likely to grant permission when students are encouraged to buy the work being used.
If you are unable to use public domain or openly licensed (e.g., Creative Commons) materials AND are unable to make a good fair use argument or use another copyright exception, you may need to get permission to reuse all or part of a work.
Instructors of online courses do NOT have the same copyright protections as those teaching physical face-to-face courses, so there are extra precautions you must take when creating an online course. Images, videos, audio, and text can all be meaningful additions to your course content.
Instructors may use content that is in the public domain or licensed for any use, including for-profit purposes, under an appropriate Creative Commons or similar license. In all cases, instructors should make an attribution to the original source in their slides or other class materials.
The defendant may try to assert that you do not own the copyright, or that the work is in the public domain. Alternatively, the defendant may argue that even if you do have a copyright, his or her use of the work constitutes fair use, a common defense to infringement. This could mean a protracted court battle over these factual and legal questions. Moreover, even if you do prevail, there is no guaranty that the defendant will have the capital to pay a money judgment. In other words, there is a chance you might be throwing good money after bad unless you are confident that the defendant has assets.
If that does not work, consider writing a demand letter, or retaining a lawyer for the limited purpose of writing such a letter (which might be taken more seriously if it comes from a lawyer). In short, copyright litigation should never be your first move when someone infringes your work.
Understanding Copyright Protection. Copyright law protects the rights of authors, poets, painters, and video makers, among others, with regard to their original works. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be "fixed in a tangible medium of expression.".
While the copyright infringement might be emotionally painful, you should also consider the monetary losses that you are suffering from it. In the poster example above, how much money is really being lost from the illustrator's T-shirt business if some poster store copies and sells her cartoon? The market for T-shirts and posters are somewhat different, and the profit from each poster sold at the store is probably relatively minimal. This analysis of course depends on volume and the sensitivity of your business to lost sales. But always keep the practical aspect of infringement in mind before spending thousands of dollars on legal fees; how much is the infringing activity really costing you?
Litigation can be time-consuming, expensive, and stressful. You will need to hire a copyright attorney, who will likely charge hundreds of dollars per hour.
Now that you know the rights granted by the Copyright Act, the next question is what happens if you see someone infringing on those rights. The Copyright Act allows copyright owners to sue content infringers. In some cases , you can recover significant sums of money.
How does litigation work in practice? The first step is to speak with a copyright lawyer, who can advise you on the specifics of the procedure. You will need to collect evidence of the infringement, such as images of the "stolen" work being sold in stores, or printouts of the pages where it appears online. From there, your attorney will compile a document known as a complaint, which makes all of your formal legal allegations against the defendant.
Let’s conclude by going back to basics on copyright: the Constitution’s language authorizing it. Under Article I, Section 8, Congress is given power to establish copyrights and patents, “To promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
College syllabi are handed out en masse at the beginning of a course for students. Sometimes they’re kept and carefully followed; sometimes they’re tossed away when the student decides not to take the course after all. Professors often post their syllabi online. They’re certainly not treated like creative works.
It is impossible to know whether critiques will be “sensationalistic” or perfectly sensible, but that doesn’t matter. Professors should not be allowed to use copyright to avoid intellectual confrontations over their courses.
Furthermore, he argues, taxpayers have a right to know what is being taught in the universities they support. “If I’m using a Jane Austen novel instead of an economics textbook in my principles of economics course, the public certainly has a right to know that,” Podgursky writes.
Podgursky points out that professors frequently adopt much or even all of existing syllabi by other professors who have taught the same class. “Rare, indeed, is the new assistant professor who does not borrow copiously from the syllabi of his mentor professors when he starts a new teaching job,” he writes. No one ever complains about that practice.
In the UK, copyright exceptions allow the use of any type of work for the purpose of teaching (or as the law puts it: ‘for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction’) as well as performing, playing or showing literary, dramatic or musical works in the course of activities of an educational establishment.
If, as a lecturer, you wanted to share your lecture on a social network such as YouTube, you would need to remove any copyright material or seek permission from the copyright holders as this would not fall within the exception. In addition, it is also important to be aware that material produced as a teacher in the course of employment may be owned by your employer, even though in practice this is often not the case. Within any educational institution there is usually someone tasked with responsibility for copyright issues. A first step could be to find out who has that role in your place of study or work.
This means that in some cases and under certain conditions teachers and students can use protected content without permission of the copyright owner. In the UK, copyright exceptions allow the use of any type of work for the purpose of teaching (or as the law puts it: ‘for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction’) as well as performing, playing or showing literary, dramatic or musical works in the course of activities of an educational establishment.
Teachers can share copyright materials if a licence authorises them to do so or if they benefit from a copyright exception. The acts permitted under certain exceptions – such as recording of broadcasts for use in an educational establishment (Section 35 CDPA) or c opying and use of extracts of works by educational establishments (Section 36 CDPA) ...
In general, copyright protects only the expression of the ideas, not the ideas themselves. This means for example that even though the James Bond films are protected by copyright, you are still allowed to write a story about a British spy, but you need to make sure that your work is substantially different to the work you are inspired by.
As mentioned above, the use of copyright works within educational establishments is allowed either by licensing schemes or copyright exceptions. However, neither the licences nor the copyright exceptions in this field apply outside of educational settings.
A formal copyright registration is necessary in the US if you want to be able to recover more than actual damages, i.e., if you want punitive damages. In general, the question shows an unrealistic set of assumptions about what teachers do; what they're paid to do; and what the normal contractual arrangements are.
In the United States (I have zero knowledge of copyright law in other places) the following applies if you actually hold the rights to your materials: 1 You can only get copyright protection for materials that you have fixed in a "tangible medium." For example, you can copyright your presentation slides or a video recording of your lecture; you cannot copyright your unwritten, unrecorded lectures. 2 You can only copyright something you "created"; if you compile existing public domain material in a way that requires no creativity, it is not eligible for copyright protection. 3 You can explicitly notify others that you reserve all rights (the rights of the copyright holder) to the materials with a written statement to that effect. For example, you can put "Copyright 2014 0xhughes, all rights reserved" on the footer of each page. (Note that you don't have to do this to get copyright interest in the materials, but it's a standard way of warning off potential infringers.)
You can explicitly notify others that you reserve all rights (the rights of the copyright holder) to the materials with a written statement to that effect. For example, you can put "Copyright 2014 0xhughes, all rights reserved" on the footer of each page. (Note that you don't have to do this to get copyright interest in the materials, but it's a standard way of warning off potential infringers.)
Otherwise, if you think the "cat's out of the bag" on your material already, the best way to protect it is to publish it to the web, where the Internet can form a historical record for your creation and the community can now help you with fair credit assignment.
The "do not copy" (or similar desired "term of use") puts your explicit intentions on the document, in this case reserving all rights to yourself. I personally put the latter part in a different font so that it stands out as a "meta-item" of the document.
You are being paid to teach a course, which means you're getting paid to create things like power point presentations, OR simply write on the black board... Since you're choosing to create a more concrete item, this is your choice, and that is still the property of your faculty.
When you're paid to teach a course, you're not being paid to do work only while the course runs. You're also being paid to prepare the course, and you're going to need to do that before the first meeting. I have finished all of my course materials (.pdfs, lab sheets, power points, etc etc).