E-learning and copyright
Below we present information on copyright in the context of the implementation of e-learning. The materials were based on consultation with specialists from the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Silesia.
INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS AND PhD STUDENTS
With reference to the organisation of education at the University of Silesia, as well as to all lectures, language courses, computer laboratories and other classes using the methods and techniques of distance learning, we would like to raise the awareness of copyright protection for the materials provided to you.
The teaching materials you receive are for teaching purposes only and, by virtue of Article 23 of the Act of 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights, you cannot distribute them, i.e. make them available to other people. This restriction applies not only to the materials provided to you, but also to any kind of copies, photos or screenshots.
It does not matter whether the documents are signed or marked in any way or not – if these are made available by academic teachers via university platforms, the copyright belongs to the teacher and the University of Silesia (according to the Regulation on the protection, the use and the management of intellectual property of the University of Silesia and the rules on their commercialisation).
Regardless of whether you provide them for a fee or free of charge, for commercial or scientific purposes, any file sharing requires the consent of the teacher who provided you with the materials.
Sharing the protected educational materials on any kind of internet forums, chats or websites such as chomikuj.pl or ściąga.pl is considered as a particularly serious infringement of copyright. The very fact of posting teaching materials that you are not the author of in a public non-university Internet space is a violation of copyright.
Legal consequences:
The distribution of educational materials without the lecturer’s consent may result in initiating disciplinary proceedings and financial claims if the University or the lecturer suffers damage due to such action. Moreover, by virtue of Article 79 of the Act on Copyright and Related Rights, the lecturer or the University may take legal action, demanding compensation for the property damage and punishment to the perpetrator (impose a fine, penalty of restricted liberty, and imprisonment on the perpetrator – Art. 116 of the Act).
The e-mail addresses of everyone who receives the educational materials are known, thus identifying the perpetrator will not be difficult. Therefore, please do not expose yourself and others to severe legal and financial consequences of ill-considered actions.
INFORMATION FOR LECTURERS
With reference to the organisation of education at the University of Silesia, as well as to all lectures, language courses, computer laboratories and other classes using the methods and techniques of distance learning, we would like to raise the awareness of copyright protection for the materials provided to you.
First, by virtue of Article 27 Section 1 and 2 of the Act of 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights, you may only make available materials that have already been published, i.e. made available to the public with the consent of the author (in the original or translated version), however, only to serve as a teaching aid for your own content provided for learning purposes. Thus, the shared content is to be used as a teaching aid for one’s own content and cannot replace it (regarding proportions and purpose of using other people's works). Therefore, you cannot scan someone else’s papers (textbooks, articles) in their entirety and make them available to students.
In case during your classes students have to use the literature available at CINiBA (Centre for Scientific Information and Academic Library), in order to support distance learning provided by the University of Silesia, Digital Teaching Library has been established. You can find there publications posted on the basis of orders submitted by you. In this regard, one should ask the digital library to make the given material available to students (the form is available on the website of the digital library).
In the event the educational material is unavailable in the library, you may scan the needed extracts and make them available to students via appropriate platforms.
All shared materials that do not belong to you shall indicate the source and the author.
Second, you can share website links, but only public sites, without circumventing possible security measures or allowing access to the websites that require subscription and contain legally uploaded papers.
Third, when sharing educational materials with students, we act at our own risk, as we are not able to effectively protect the materials against copying. You should apply all feasible means of raising the awareness of copyright protection, such as marking the materials, labelling it with ‘All rights reserved’ and/or ‘Copyright by...’, placing the watermark, setting a short period availability of the materials, etc.; nevertheless, the truth is that it will not fully prevent copyright infringement, but only facilitate possible pursuit of claims in legal proceedings, although it should be rather avoided. In addition, the student has the right to make a copy of the materials shared by you and does not have to delete it after the end of the class. This right results from Article 23 of the Act on Copyright, and it cannot be deactivated.
Another important piece of information – copyrighted materials (one’s own and somebody else’s) shall be shared via platforms which are dedicated and recommended by the University of Silesia, that is, the University’s internal systems (e.g. Moodle platform or MS Teams). There is a risk of copyright infringement or loss of control of one’s documents (educational material) if they are shared on Facebook groups.
Please bear in mind that if you share all of your authorship materials that have already been published and you have entered into an agreement that transfers the copyright to the publisher, then you no longer have these rights. Then, the sharing of such materials is covered by Article 27 of the Act on Copyright.
In the event someone has prepared the entire course for students, e.g. uploaded extracts or a collection of materials (someone else’s materials protected by copyrights) for the entire term, then the provisions of Article 271 of the Act on Copyright are applicable, namely, the provision on publishing papers in textbooks, excerpts and anthologies. In these cases, the author has the right to remuneration.
During the lecture, use the right to quote, but remember to indicate the author and the source.
