news
Copyright law
‘ blocking’ online courses
By ANTONIA MAIOLO
Law reform is needed to ensure Australian universities are able to fully utilise digital technology and to remain competitive in a global market, say industry leaders.
Universities Australia( UA) and the University of Sydney have sent submissions to the Australian Law Reform Commission’ s( ALRC) review of copyright legislation arguing that there is need for greater flexibility in copyright law.
They say the current Copyright Act does not support innovation in the sector particularly with the use of copyrighted material in the provision of massive open online courses( MOOCs).
“[ The ] current Copyright Act 1968 is not flexible enough to promote innovation in the tertiary education sector and provide a cost-effective framework for management of copyrights in the modern learning spaces,” the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, Dr Michael Spence, wrote in the university’ s submission to the review.
“ Of particular concern are the communications limits that restrict the ability to teach our students in a way that is fair in other jurisdictions,” he wrote.
At present if a university faculty wants to make a reasonable portion of a published work available online it can only do so if no other part of the same work has been published by another faculty. The limitations place an additional administrative burden on university staff to ensure that copyrights are managed properly.
“ Such limitations make no sense today and impede the effective delivery of course materials to our students,” Spence wrote.
UA, in their submission to the ALRC, said copyright is operating as a“ roadblock” and Australian universities are limited in the content they can use for MOOCs, despite paying more than $ 200 million a year to commercial publishers for access to academic journals.
“ Australian universities have much less flexibility than their US counterparts when determining what kinds of content will be included in courses offered via new MOOC delivery platforms,” UA wrote in their submission.
The peak university body said any new technologies will be obstructed by Australia’ s outdated copyright regime.
The University of Melbourne, which already offers a number of MOOCs through Coursera, uses content created themselves as well as open licensed content such as Creative Commons material or material for which they have obtained a license.
Helen Thomson, the manager of the university’ s Copyright Office, said the statutory licenses that it would normally rely on to
use third-party content do not apply to MOOCs, so it had to find alternatives.
“ Obtaining individual licenses for content is resource intensive and time consuming so it is not effective when dealing with large amounts of content,” Thomson said.“ The university would like to see greater flexibility to deal with innovations in education and digital technology.” She added that broader fair use provisions would provide flexibility to adapt to changes in delivering educational content and engaging students, as well as future-proofing the Copyright Act. ■
www. campusreview. com. au February 2013 | 5