fair use in online classes?

UCLA is in the middle of discussions with the Association for Information and Media Equipment over UCLA’s use of streaming videos and video clips in their online course materials. While teachers have shown videos in classes since there have been videos, the embedding of copyrighted videos in online course, even password-protected course areas, is causing new copyright discussions. While UCLA feels that the TEACH Act of 2003 applies in this case, they are nonetheless ceasing to embed videos in online courses while they try to work out a settlement. Inside Higher Ed has a longer discussion of the issues involved in this article. One of the more interesting wrinkles is that copying a DVD in order to stream it online violates the DMCA which is not covered by the TEACH Act.

Unlike most news content online, the comments really add to the discussion happening here and I suggest checking them out. [via molly]

UCLA taser incident, why no UCLA library voice?

What about the UCLA taser incident? Morgan wonders why we didn’t hear more about it on the blogosphere. I know that I was waiting for not just the inevitable ass-covering by the University Police, but also some sort of response from someone within the UCLA library system. I figured it would be decent to give them a chance to say something — perhaps along the lines of the Salon article that Morgan links to “I don’t like to see patrons tazed but in this case I think the campus police handled this correctly.” or perhaps something more sympathetic to the man who was tasered by campus police. But they said nothing, nothing that I could find. I was still waiting by the time I read Leslie’s letter, and Morgan’s post.

I was proud of Leslie Burger’s open letter to the UCLA Chancellor. In general I have been happy with some of the gutsy letters she’s written on behalf of libraries. There is a certain disconnect that happens when libraries have an opportunity to go on record about something that includes the larger institution that they are a part of. UCLA decides that the case is closed. What is the library’s role, or the role of library staffers, to comment on the events that occurred, events that were by all accounts the results of non-compliance with a library policy?