Outlook Magazine| Jul 01, 2013
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?286247
I am dissiminating this article to inquire about what Copywrite law
says about recording lectures by blind students in the class?
Are blind students exempted from being liable?
Do enlighten me friends.
Block Quote Begins
Right Copyright
•Seek written permission, aka ‘consent forms’, before recording audio,
video or taking photos
•Agree beforehand on whether the recording can be shared, either with
a class, or the wider public, or over the Internet
•Educational institutions may not make clear their copyright rules;
but the rules still exist, and such recordings are not permitted
•It is the student who brings copyright law into operation the moment
he/she starts taping
***
Prerna, a 20-year-old Delhi University student, records some of her
class lectures. She does this in the hope of revising the classroom
sessions later. She doesn’t seek permission from her teachers; she
simply tapes what they say secretly on her cellphone. This is
something her classmates do too. When Prerna makes the tapes, she also
has in mind her younger sister, Shefali, who is interested in the same
topics and sometimes listens to the lectures. “I can’t say I revise
every lecture when I get home, but I like to record some important
lectures, like those by visiting faculty, sometimes for my sister,
sometimes for my own record,” she says. What Prerna and the many other
students in universities and schools perhaps don’t know is that, when
they press the ‘Record’ button, they are setting in motion a long
chain reaction involving copyright and privacy issues. Universities
and higher education institutes are only just beginning to grapple
with the ‘problem’. And each is doing so differently, in the absence
of clear rules or guidelines. In May, the faculty of law at Delhi
University issued a notice banning students from taping lectures. It
warned of action against those doing so. Here, the institution was not
raising copyright issues as much as trying to enforce discipline: it
found many students missing class and making up by copying recordings
from those who attended.
IIT Delhi, too, has had to grapple with the issue. Students’ tapes
here have posed a different kind of challenge: teachers have found
that what they present in class is being taught at private coaching
classes that help hundreds of aspirants clear the tough IIT entrance
exam. These institutions are known to get their hands on the questions
regularly put to students at IITs. The teachers say these questions,
and often entire class tutorials, are sold to the private institutes
by students. The going rate is said to be Rs 150 per page of a
tutorial—good pickings for a student. “The reason IIT entrance exams
are tough is because we never pose questions picked from the back of
another book. The test consists entirely of new sets of problems that
we come up with,” says Dr Nalin Pant, a professor of chemistry at IIT
Delhi.
IIT teachers have tried to stem the practice, for instance by placing
their model assignments behind a glass barrier to make photography
difficult. But it’s a cat-and-mouse game: no one can be sure who’s
winning. Cellphone cameras keep getting better and students keep
finding new ways to beat the system. “I am not in favour of being
hyper-paranoid about intellectual property when it comes to my
students,” says Dr Pant. Strict rules, such as disallowing cellphones
in the institute, won’t work either, he says. “This is a university,
not a top secret facility. There’s simply nothing you can do about
such recordings. But I’m not scared—teachers must create an
interpersonal dynamic unique to each class so that a taped session
will simply not be a good enough substitute for attending lectures,”
he says.
A lot depends on how teachers take the challenge: Will students simply
stop showing up if technology permits them to stay away? Or will
institutes up the ante, forcing the students, even at post-graduate
levels, to meet stricter attendance norms? Even legally speaking, the
issue is grey.
Tech class With cellphones and laptops, recording is easy. (Photograph
by R.A. Chandroo)
The copyright for “oral communication”, say a lecture, experts say,
rests with the person delivering the lecture, or with the institution
at which the lecture is delivered. But a lecture can be a subject of
copyright issues only after it has been taped, not when the words are
simply spoken. Therefore, it is the surreptitiously taping student who
makes the copyright issue arise in the first place. That’s when things
get murkier. “There is a copyright the moment it is recorded. So, will
the copyright rest with the teacher and the student jointly, since
it’s the student doing the taping? Will the institute enforce the
copyright, and how? What if a student posts the video or audiotape on
YouTube or Facebook? Each situation has a different implication in
law,” says Shamnad Basheer, chair professor, intellectual property,
National University of Juridical Sciences.
In a way, taped conversations compare with classroom notes jotted down
by students. Writing really fast, some students can get everything
down on paper. The trouble arises only if they subsequently make
photocopies of these notes. “In the same way, some people have
excellent memories and can write, in an exam, exactly what they read
in a book. Technically, reproducing what you have remembered by heart
amounts to making an unauthorised copy of a book. That is why, under
the law, students giving exams are especially exempt,” says Prof V.K.
Unni, who teaches intellectual property rights and law at IIM
Calcutta.
He says that even recordings that are transient, or temporary, if made
without permission, technically run afoul of the law. Putting up a
surreptitiously taped lecture on YouTube is inescapably a violation.
Mostly though, this doesn’t end up in court—other issues take
centrestage. “Generally, courts have been approached with unauthorised
downloads, misuse of information shared with the public on websites,
and use of recordings to defame a person, not students making tapes of
lectures,” he says. Basheer points out that the teacher does have a
right to prevent her lecture from being taped, even though there’s
nothing preventing the student from recording it. However, these
recordings cannot be subsequently used—sharing on Facebook or among
friends would be a violation.
At times, students like Paromita Dasgupta, who’s doing masters in
heritage conservation in Delhi, have explicit, but oral, permission of
their teachers to tape some sessions. “A lot of heritage conservation
coursework is conducted in the field. Even some exams are conducted
outdoors. It’s impossible to make notes, so we make copies of the
field visits on audio or video using cameras or cellphones. It’s
something our teachers support and encourage,” she says.
Many teachers say they do not mind students recording lectures. Prof
Ashwini Kumar Bansal, dean, faculty of law, Delhi University, says
that even if an institute is liberal with copyright, it does not
change the entitlement of the teacher who holds the copyright.
“Legally, it appears that the teacher holds the rights to his lecture.
Whether the fact that public money is used to set up an institute
makes a difference or not is a matter courts have to take a view on.”
Indeed, institutions would, one day soon, pursue students in courts of
law for such infringement.
Block Quote End
--
Avinash Shahi
MPhil Research Scholar
Centre for the Study of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi India
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