Allen Martin
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Phone: 903-566-7405 (o)
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E-Mail: amartin@mail.uttyl.edu
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Copyright Issues:
By the way, yes, you are right in thinking that copyright is a big deal for me. Though it is a long and complex story, I will just mention that in the early 1990s, I became quite concerned about the over-use of distance education in our universities. The worst problem is having a university taking hold of a course on tape, disk, or whatever and using it for years without adequately compensating the faculty member. As I worked on this issue I came to see that distance education and the big problems that faculty encounter with it revolve around intellectual property and the unfortunate policies that universities had. I set out to get my university to develop a modern, faculty-friendly copyright policy. In that effort, I met Georgia Harper of the University of Texas Office of General Council. We worked together and she produced a wonderful intellectual property policy which the University of Texas System adopted. In short order, various universities copied our policy and then others copied these policies.
Protecting faculty works has not and does not come easily, and it is far more important than most faculty members realize or will ever have to realize. Once a University has adopted a fine intellectual property policy, the protection of copyright is still not automatic. What we have to do is be our own watch dogs. That meant that when a claim of your's is jumped, you must let the offender know and tell them to cease and desist. You then need to be prepared to fight. The best situation is to let people know, at the outset, that you have a claim, and let them do the right thing.
By the way, yes, you are right in thinking that copyright is a big deal for me. Though it is a long and complex story, I will just mention that in the early 1990s, I became quite concerned about the over-use of distance education in our universities. The worst problem is having a university taking hold of a course on tape, disk, or whatever and using it for years without adequately compensating the faculty member. As I worked on this issue I came to see that distance education and the big problems that faculty encounter with it revolve around intellectual property and the unfortunate policies that universities had. I set out to get my university to develop a modern, faculty-friendly copyright policy. In that effort, I met Georgia Harper of the University of Texas Office of General Council. We worked together and she produced a wonderful intellectual property policy which the University of Texas System adopted. In short order, various universities copied our policy and then others copied these policies.
Protecting faculty works has not and does not come easily, and it is far more important than most faculty members realize or will ever have to realize. Once a University has adopted a fine intellectual property policy, the protection of copyright is still not automatic. What we have to do is be our own watch dogs. That meant that when a claim of your's is jumped, you must let the offender know and tell them to cease and desist. You then need to be prepared to fight. The best situation is to let people know, at the outset, that you have a claim, and let them do the right thing.