By Julia Gardiner
This spring, students might be making more trips to the library than they anticipated. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) announced that the University, as well as Marquette and Syracuse Universities, have agreed to new guidelines that regulate the use of copyrighted course material in digital format.
The guidelines are a response to the belief held by the AAP and various publishers that staff members at colleges and universities are providing students with educational material in a digital format without following existing copyright laws.
“The AAP, our member publishers and the authors of the works they publish applaud these universities for implementing their new copyright guidelines and taking steps to educate their faculty and staff on the proper use of copyrighted works in digital formats,” said Patricia Schroeder, president of the AAP.
The agreement affirms that copyrighted material in a digital format falls under the same copyright laws that protect printed material. The guidelines were developed separately by each university and pertain to the availability of electronically reserved material.
“It’s somebody else’s work,” University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Herman A. Berliner said. “We just want to make sure that when we use someone else’s work, we are getting the proper permissions that allow us to make use of it.”
It is a long-standing principle that mass physical copying of course material for distribution to students requires permission from the copyright holder. However, similar electronic distribution of such materials without permission through the electronic reserve feature of the Blackboard program has now been determined to be in violation of copyright laws as well.
“It resonates with our faculty because a lot of them are authors. A lot of their work is copyrighted and they want to make sure their work is used properly,” Berliner said.
The professors who write material used in University courses were sometimes the same ones who posted such material on the electronic reserve system. “I cannot speak for other professors, but as someone working in the publishing profession, I am all for copyright protection of electronic materials,” said University adjunct assistant professor of publishing studies Barbara Heinssen. “The authors and publishers deserve to be recognized and compensated if the use of their materials exceeds the limits of fair use.”
“[Professors] weren’t the primary factor in us codifying the rules, but they did come to us and ask, ‘What is doable under fair use guidelines?'” Berliner said. “We felt the best thing we could do for our faculty and students is to just make it as clear as we possibly could and take the ambiguity out.”
The new guidelines prohibit professors from posting course material online without permission, making it necessary to reserve the physical material in the Axinn Library for student use or to force students to buy extra books. Either option can be an inconvenience on students accustomed to accessing information electronically from the comfort of their rooms.
“Seeing as Hofstra has a large commuter student population, it is a great hindrance to both these students and even residents that they cannot do their assigned reading in the comfort of their own room,” said Jonathan Morgan, a sophomore liberal arts major. “With college life as hectic and difficult as it is, we need all the help we can get in making our study materials more convenient.”
Berliner assured students and faculty that the electronic reserve system would still provide support for their courses. “It won’t be a big overhaul for students or E-reserve,” said Berliner. “The support we provide to students through E-reserve is going to be maintained. So for the students, this is a relatively invisible change.”