Copyrights of recorded lectures? Most universities around the world are now requesting their lecturers to record lectures and post them on a repository. In my university, we use Moodle to store and share video recordings.
My question is: what are the copyirights of my uploaded videos (say in UK and/or USA)? Do I have any rights once I upload my videos to the system?
My question is motivated by a big discussion we are currently having in our Faculty (where Faculty means a group of Science Departments) on whether the University has total rights on our uploaded videos. If so, they want to recycle lectures even after lecturers leave (say, for another university) or die.
I understand this can be seen as one of those questions whose answer is: check your contract, ask your manager, read the entire Constitution, ... My question relates to a general understanding of copyrights of video lectures. Thanks.
If you, the faculty, want to retain any rights, I suggest that you (as a collective group negotiating with the administration) write them into a contract. You might be able to come to a royalty agreement, but I doubt much beyond that.
If faculty are employees of the university then most of the IP created can be claimed by the employer, just as if you were employed by IBM in a research capacity.
I don't think that universities (none in my experience) get in the way of a faculty member publishing books (or software, ...), but those are normally written at the full initiative of the author(s) rather than at the direction of the university. And since there are other alternatives for teaching a course than writing your own book, it is normally an independent activity. Lectures, however, like other explicit course materials, seem to be in a different category.
The course materials were created by yourself, but at the direction of the employer. The university provides the infrastructure and the audience.
IANAL, but guess that the above is a pretty general interpretation. Copyright law, however, is variable around the world and to some extent, so is the relationship between the faculty and the university. So, &quot;your mileage may vary.&quot;
Absent a formal agreement, the university will probably claim to own all rights including the rights to reuse such things in the future whether the faculty member is employed there or not and without additional compensation. It would be difficult, at best, to contest this view, I think.
I would prefer a different interpretation, of course, in which the law would recognize that the faculty is the university and derives all function and authority from the consent and participation of the faculty. However, that is a late medieval view. Yes, I'm that old.
If a university wants to maintain a high quality faculty and keep them happy and productive, I think they would be willing to negotiate some sharing arrangement. It would need to be formalized. An argument for such an agreement would, I think, be an improvement in the general quality of such things.