Re: the boundaries of educational use

There is no general agreement on this, and it all depends on who you ask. This broadcast is intended for student review of images that they already saw in class. They saw the 35mm version in the classroom. They need to study these images again for exams, visual literacy, and knowledge. Looking at the image in a digital form will not impact the market except in the case of commercial slide vendors that are selling digital images to accompany their 35mm transparency images. I see no difference on the market if students reviewed the slides in a carousel in the library or saw the image on a computer. The image resolution of the images is probably in the low to moderate range, which precludes any publication, pre-press, or commercial use of the images: worrying about students downloading the images for commercial gain is will occupy lots of people's attention, but there isn't a market for images in this range. Besides, the images could be accompanied by suitable warnings about copyright restrictions, and the images could also be protected from downloading with security software programs.

The copyright act does have a face to face limitation that is probably causing the attorney to make the distinction between the four walls of the classroom and the network. I don't think I understand the original intent of the face to face limitation, but it could be to ensure that non-profit education was actually occurring, and of course it was written into law before the advent of networked personal computers. It is this face to face limitation that doesn't make sense in today's computing environment.

Maryly Snow
merely a librarian
Architecture Slide Library
UC Berkeley

> A recent conversation with a copyright lawyer about the limits of
> educational use of visual images has raised more questions than it
> answered. I am working with copyrighted images in digital form, and
> wonder what this group's opinion might be on making those images
> available to students over a campus network, with the understanding
> that those images will be used by the students in conjunction with a
> course that they are taking. The copyright lawyer seemed to think that
> "broadcasting" images was fine within the sharply defined limits of
> the four walls of the classroom, but that making them available over
> the network would not be. Is there general agreement or disagreement
> on this?
>
> Michael Roy
> Research Associate
> W.E.B. Du Bois Institute
> Harvard University
> 77 Dunster St.
> Cambridge MA 02138
> phone: 617 496 7403
> fax: 617 496 4631 (call first)
Received on Sat Feb 26 1994 - 02:15:07 GMT