What About Copyright?

With the implementation of the new electronic course syllabus, questions about copyright issues and fair use are bound to crop up. In addition to knowing what materials can and cannot be used for hard copy handouts, Dental School faculty members must now decide what can and cannot be posted on the Web.  This decision is complicated by the fact that there are currently no clear rules governing online copyright issues in an academic setting. Therefore, a proposal has been set forth by the UNC-CH Copyright Committee (1997-98) that calls for the establishment of an "Office of Scholarly Communication" at UNC-CH.  However, funding has yet to be allocated for creating this new office.

In the meantime, we have gathered the following resources to help Dental School faculty who have questions about copyright issues.  We have also worked with the Health Sciences Library to come up with a process for getting access to online textbooks and journal articles that have historically been accessed in paper format as reserve readings in the library.

Copyright Resources Online

Following is a list of links compiled by the UNC-CH Center for Instructional Technology:

• Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Distance Learning
• UNC Copyright Policy & Intellectual Property
• UNC Copyright Information
• UNC Office of the President Primer on Copyright Ownership
• UNC Office of the President Primer on Copyright Use
• UNC Office of the President Fair Use Worksheet
• Computers and Copyrights: Bibliography
• Yale University's Copyright Resources Online
• U.S. Copyright Office

Another good source for background information on the copyright issue as it relates to UNC is the following article from the University Gazette:

• University Gazette, February 10,1999

Protecting Your Materials

Many faculty members are concerned about protecting the intellectual property they post online from unauthorized use and reproduction. As the Dental School Web site is password-protected, access to materials by unauthorized users is unlikely. If, however, you would like to place a copyright statement on your own work, you may place a statement such as:

© All rights reserved.

at the bottom of your document (feel free to copy and paste the above example into your document, if you wish). While any document, whether it contains this statement or not, is protected domestically by federal copyright laws, the statement does add a reminder that the author expects his or her copyright to be respected.

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