The free flow of ideas is what universities are all about. And the Internet -- with its far-reaching connectivity and ability to shift information from screen to screen with a few keyboard clicks -- seems the perfect mode of speeding and easing the flow of ideas.
Yet an equally cherished notion to the people who produce ideas for a living is that they will be paid for their work. That means the author of a book, article or play, or the creator of computer software program, expects to get royalties when anyone uses the work.
Copyright law exists to define the point where the free flow of ideas meets the demand for royalties. And modern communication tools such as the Internet and distance learning have created new areas of conflict regarding copyrighted materials.
Those conflicts have a major impact on the University, where copyright laws govern everything from materials used in classes to scholarly articles published by faculty members.
The challenges posed by new technologies are but one of the many problems the University must wrestle with relating to copyright laws. Copyright issues involve everything from faculty members learning which teaching practices are legal to the soaring costs paid by universities for professional journals.
A University copyright committee recently issued its report after two years of work. One of the committee's findings was that the issue remains so fluid and complex that a permanent committee should be appointed by the chancellor.
To help University employees understand copyright issues, the committee also proposed creating an Office of Scholarly Communication staffed by an attorney who is expert in copyright laws. This attorney would report to both the associate provost for University libraries and the University counsel.
Provost Dick Richardson said that the University has not yet identified any funding for the proposed office, but hopes to as the budgeting process continues.
"We recognize the importance of the request and have the Office of Scholarly Communication on a list of unmet needs," Richardson said.
Robert Peet, a biology professor, chaired the Copyright Committee. He said the Office of Scholarly Communication is an important recommendation because it would give faculty and staff a needed resource in dealing with copyright issues.
Those issues include:
The Internet raises the stakes of many common teaching practices, according to Lolly Gasaway, the director of the University's law library and an expert on copyright law.
For example, copying and distributing a journal article for a class is allowed under the "fair use" guidelines of copyright law, which allows for the use of such materials for teaching to a limited audience.
But put that same material on a web site, and it becomes illegal. That's because the web is worldwide, meaning anyone with Internet access can likely read it. That's the equivalent of publishing the material and therefore illegal, Gasaway said.
"Putting something on the Internet means everyone who reads it is making a copy," Gasaway said. "That's very different than making one photocopy."
Making sure course web sites are password-protected to limit access to class members can be, but isn't always, a solution.
Rather than the wild, frontier-like image many associate with the Internet, the web is becoming more structured thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed in October.
"It's not a free-for-all," Gasaway said. "A lot of controls are starting to be put in place and the Internet is starting to be reigned in."
These controls attempt to duplicate the same balances in copyright laws regarding books, magazines, films and music to new technologies such as the Internet, Gasaway said.
Entire industries -- publishing, music, movies -- are based on copyright ownership. The ability of consumers to send and receive copies of novels, songs and films for free via the Internet would be a deathblow to these industries and dry up the incomes of authors, singers and actors.
So these industries increasingly crack down on violators. In January, for example, an arm of the recording industry worked with Swiss authorities to shut down an Internet site based in Switzerland that listed the lyrics to thousands of songs.
The threat of legal action by copyright holders can unsettle the balance between the need for the free flow of ideas and the rights of copyright owners.
That's why the University's copyright committee urged the campus to assert its own rights under the "fair use" clause, said Peet, the committee chair.
"Rights that aren't exercised can be lost," Peet said. "We wanted to encourage faculty members to assert their rights. Fair use is important to the University and it is important that the University trusts faculty members to make good judgments."
Making good decisions can be frustrating for faculty members. Getting permission to use copyrighted material in a course-pack can be frustrating and expensive.
Including copies of an article from The New York Times in course-packs costs $200, said Joe Hewitt, associate provost for University libraries. The newspaper charges that fee even though the library subscribes for multiple copies of the paper.
Sometimes faculty can't get permission to use material at any price. Hewitt said tracking down copyright owners is often a difficult, time-consuming task, such as finding some Vietnamese labor unions for Carolina's course on Nike labor practices.
Other times the copyright holder simply won't grant permission. Hewitt said that getting permission to use pictures of art work is a particularly difficult proposition.
The most vexing case, which happens with alarming frequency, is when a University faculty member can't get permission to use one of his or her own articles because the professional journal that printed it won't grant permission.
"We have documented cases of professors not being allowed to use their own work," Hewitt said.
That's because faculty members routinely sign away their copyrights when they publish material in scholarly journals. Faculty members do this because getting published is critical to achieving tenure, Peet said.
"The average faculty member has brushes with copyright laws when they publish articles, but I'm not sure they always know how much of their rights they are signing away," Peet said.
This creates for-profit professional journals that are monopolies, which creates another problem for universities in that important scholarly journals have soared in cost.
For example, the Journal of Marine Systems has risen 269 percent in cost in the last five years. The Journal of Applied Polymer Science has risen 118 percent and now costs $11,343 a year.
The Academic Affairs Library pays $594,000 annually to subscribe to 345 journals, Hewitt said.
The high cost of journals actually prompted the University to form the copyright committee. The goal was to start coming up with alternatives to for-profit journals.
Peet said that University professors can't simply stop signing over their copyright privileges to journals because the result would be that the faculty members wouldn't get published.
The committee's report recommends that the University seek talks with other universities to create common policies of faculty members reserving rights to their work. Only if a consortium of major research universities was formed to assert these rights could an alternative work, Peet said.
The idea has one important backer: UNC President Molly Broad.
Turning such an idea into reality, however, will take years, Peet said.
While the University pursues establishing an Office of Scholarly Communication, faculty and staff members must keep themselves informed of copyright guidelines.
Gasaway said that most professional societies have some information on copyright issues. There also are numerous web sites on the topic (see box at left).
A lot of information on copyright issues is available on the Internet. A good place to start is a summary of a recent copyright colloquium held by the UNC Faculty Assembly available on the UNC System's web site at: http://www.ga.unc.edu/ (the site requires Adobe Acrobat to read). Once at the site, look under "What's New" in December. Then under "Issues and Priorities" will be the summary, which includes a long list of helpful web sites.
Some of those sites are:
Other helpful sites include:
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