Copyright has long been an issue in the education sectors but never more so than now when new recording and communication technologies make duplication of materials easier and more difficult to monitor and control. This is one of the ANTA documents relating to Copyright and highlights the facts that

• Technology has provided users with new means of accessing copyright materials. However, the ease of use has not been accompanied by a corresponding efficiency improvement in the arrangements for licensing copyright materials - although the role played by collecting societies has undoubtedly helped.
  
• The relationship between copyright owners and educational users of copyright materials has been a troubled one for some time.
  
• The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 extends the main educational statutory licence to cover electronic uses, and opens up the opportunity for educational institutions to scan works, email digital copies of works and install works on an intranet for use by students.

Key implications

• Issues relating to educational use are unlikely to be resolved until there are mature technologies and associated business models for licensing minor uses at a cost that is modest and acceptable to education users, combined with automatic recording and aggregation of copying transactions and periodic invoicing. This would appear to be some years distant.
  In the short term the VET sector should focus on the task of reaching agreement with copyright representatives on the form of an "electronic use system" under the extended statutory licence for educational copying.
  
• The establishment this year of AEShareNet offers a means of addressing certain licensing issues within the VET sector.
  
• In the medium term, VET should seek to instigate and participate in a range of policy issues in the copyright reform agenda (such as moral rights, copyright law simplification, competition law aspects, parallel importation, etc), in concert with other education sectors.

Further information

• A range of information papers and bulletins targeted at specific issues is available on the website of the Australian Copyright Council
  
• The MCEETYA Task Force on Copyright has commissioned preparation of an Internet Compliance Kit for educational institutions, which contains a substantial amount of guidance on copyright issues; the document is currently in draft.

Further information on the legal and regulatory framework for flexible learning may be found in the Legal and Regulatory Framework : Research Report available through this link.

Readability:
Slow in some areas but if you are interested in copyright issues you'll find yourself unwilling to skip to many parts of this.

Recommended use:
Managers, project teams developing online materials, educational staff reviewing and/or using online materials should all take an interest in the Legal and Regulatory Framework. This is an issue that will become much more problematic before reasonable solutions are found.