As announced in my previous post, HigherEd BlogCon started yesterday on a computer near you.
The best thing about this free online conference is that you can “attend” presentations whenever you have time.
I didn’t get a chance to catch one of the two presentations scheduled yesterday that picked my interest in the teaching track, but I was able to do it today. And, I’m glad I did as “Legal issues in podcasting the traditional classroom” was definitely worth my time.
In a 2-part screencast of about an hour in total, Colette Vogele (Stanford Law School) and Elizabeth Townsend Gard (London School of Economics, Stanford Law School) explain all you need to know about copyright laws and how they apply to podcasting in general and to classcasting in particular.
The second part by Townsend Gard really focuses on copyright issues for podcasting classes. And, it’s probably a good idea to invite any of your podcasting professors to watch this presentation as it explains very well what can be done and what shouldn’t be done in a class podcast when using copyrighted material.
In the first part, Colette Vogele offers a very good introduction to copyright issues in any podcasting activity. This presentation should really be mandatory viewing for any podcaster who doesn’t want to receive email from lawyers.
It’s 31-minute long and is really worth watching. However, in case you don’t have the time to do it now, I’ll share my notes as I usually do when attending conferences:
- Copyright laws protect creative expression (visual arts, music, poetry, fiction but not ideas, concepts or recipes) against certain uses by third party without permission.
- There are several cases where you don’t need permission from the owner of the copyright:
- public domain work – that would be any work created before 1923
- US government work
- fair use – basically, when you just quote small parts of the work with proper attribution
- When it comes to podcasting music for intros or outros, it’s always smart to use podsafe tracks available on different websites referenced in Vogele’s presentation powerpoint or works with licenses allowing such uses (Creative Commons). If you don’t, you have to get a proper license.
Again, I strongly recommend you to take the time to watch at least the first part of this screencast if your institution offers podcasting. Copyright has always been a sticky issue on the Web, and knowledge is power.
