While it might be hard to imagine, Blackboard has the potential to have just as many illegally copied materials as you might find on other much more publicized platforms for media distribution such as Kazaa, Limewire and hosting websites such as Mediafire and Megaupload. How can this be? One may ask this because, of course, Blackboard was never intended to be a storefront for stolen copyrighted materials. Yet, digging a little bit deeper into your professor’s posted articles and readings may reveal potential copyright infringements nonetheless.

This past Friday, November 13, Linda Reifler-Alessi, Reserves Director for the Horn Library, conducted a copyright law seminar for Babson faculty in order to prevent copyright infringements in professor distributed materials, especially those distributed on Blackboard. The goal of this informational session was to clarify the rights that professors and faculty have to use, distribute, and make copies of the work of other professors, those owned by publishers, including the rights that they have concerning distribution of their own works. Professors, just like students, have a duty to respect the ownership rights of other people’s works and this seminar (and others like it in the future) was aimed at limiting abuses through education on proper licensing and fair use procedure.

When a professor posts a reading on Blackboard, whether it is an excerpt from a piece of literature, a Harvard Business Review case, or an interesting Wall Street Journal article, someone owns the rights to that material. Sometimes it is the originator of that work (i.e. the author/artist/photographer/journalist, etc.) who made the work that hold the rights to the work in question, but, much more frequently, it is a publisher or holding company that owns the rights to most of what is posted on Blackboard. As an educational institution, Babson has a duty to respect the ownership rights of originators and the school must pay the holder of the copyright a license to use the work in question. The college has a compliance policy to this regard that all professors and faculty must adhere to. The problems begin to occur when professors are not aware of this and post materials on Blackboard without a license, usually inoffensively, but illegally nonetheless.

The ultimate goal, therefore, is to educate professors on how to avoid posting and distributing materials illegally. The first step is, when in doubt about the legality of distributing something, contact the Reserves Department in the library immediately. They have all the resources necessary to make sure that the distribution of materials is within the compliance policy outlined by the school. A simple step that you can take to reduce your level of infringement, whether you are a professor, student or faculty member, is to use links whenever possible. Links to legitimate outside sources will frequently have a license and should be used whenever possible. Also, you can often use most materials so long as they are exhibited in a live classroom. These steps eliminate the need to make copies or post it online for use, limiting the level of infringement.

For more information on how to properly distribute materials to students, professors or faculty, contact the Reserves Department at the library or go to the Association of Research Libraries at www.arl.org . Also, check the Babson Buzz landing page for information on more seminars like this one being hosted on campus in the near future.