by Charles P. Nash
A little less than a year ago, an article in this Newsletter entitled “Cyber Higher Ed” introduced its readers to several educational “innovations” that could/can seriously affect the intellectual property rights of faculty members everywhere. At that time we were unaware that during the 1997-98 academic year a Task Force chaired by R.M. Tanner, the Executive Vice Chancellor at Santa Cruz, was reviewing the status of UC’s copyright policies.
The Task Force was charged “to review University policies and recommend revisions if and as appropriate to enhance the creative work of members of the academic community. Its overarching purpose is to assure that institutional policy continues to serve University and academic values in a rapidly changing environment.” [Note: Some may infer from the last sentence that the empanelers of the Task Force believe that “University” and academic” values may or even do differ in significant ways.]
In September of 1998 the Task Force submitted its Draft Report, which then underwent “informal” review by interested parties including the campuses, the systemwide Academic Senate, and (at its own initiative) the Council of UC Faculty Associations. The 23 page report along with a number of other quite interesting documents is available on the Office of the President website at www.ucop.edu/acadinit/copyright.
The Task Force made 15 recommendations, many of them meritorious. However, Recommendation 8 has drawn heavy criticism from a number of quarters, including CUCFA. This recommendation reads: “UC copyright policies should address ownership issues surrounding class materials, including the classroom “performance” of lectures and interactive compendia incorporating the contributions of students, regardless of the medium in which they are created.”
We urge the interested reader to retrieve and study the full text of (at least) Recommendation 8 to get a sense of where the Task Force thinks the University might be heading. Among the issues that they feel need to be addressed in UC copyright policy are: “Ownership and scope of use of class materials made available on the Web; ownership and scope of use of recordings of faculty performances…”; and “use of course materials in cases when faculty members leave UC.”
CUCFA submitted a three-page analysis which argued (among other things) that according to current Federal copyright law, lectures are not performances, and that there is no distinction under the law between lectures whose tangible reduction takes the form of videotape vs. lecture notes. Either way the copyright belongs to the faculty member, not the University.
These are clearly not trivial matters. If a lecture in any form whatsoever became “work done for hire,” then the University would own the copyright.
Existing University policy (see www.ucop.edu/ott/crprimr.html) states that: “copyright ownership resides with the originator of the work if it is Scholarly/Artistic work, which is work originated by a Designated Academic Appointee as a result of independent academic effort, unless the work is also deliverable under Sponsored Work or Contracted Facilities work [Both of these are defined later in the document and neither of them fit the circumstances that underlie the scholarly products of typical faculty members], or there are special overriding ownership provisions in place.”
The question which is currently before UC’s house is: “Will things stay this way?” The Faculty Associations are not foot-draggers, but neither can they sit quietly by and allow the University unilaterally to define the future conditions of our employment. We will obviously keep you posted as things evolve.