Webinar: Peter Jaszi, Meredith Jacob, Prue Adler Present the Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use in OERs

Aneeta Mathur-Ashton
July 27, 2021

 

Peter Jaszi (PIJIP Professor Emeritus), Meredith Jacob, (Public Lead, Creative Commons USA at PIJIP) and Prue Adler (Senior Policy Fellow at PIJIP), recently held a webinar on the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in OERs. They were joined by Will Cross (North Carolina State University Libraries) and Carys Craig (York University Osgoode Hall Law School), who have been working with them on the Code. The webinar, hosted by the Association of Learning Technology was a part in the series on Copyright and online learning during the pandemic. 

The webinar introduced the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OER, explaining strategies for applying it to different scenarios regarding the creation and use of OER. The webinar also introduced the work done to merge U.S. and Canadian “fair practices.”

Meredith Jacob spoke about the public domain, creative commons licenses, fair use, and open education. She mentioned three legal provisions that provide the basis for using materials in creating OER –

Jacob identified three types of legal uses of previous works in the creation of OERs - use of public domain works, use of CC licensed materials, and application of fair use and other limitations and exceptions. She explained the Code is a tool for institutional and individual copyright education, a guide for reasoning how to apply fair use to projects, a vehicle for talking about fair use with colleagues, and as a project to attract new makers to the OER project and enabling new projects.

Will Cross discussed how to apply the Code in the states, explaining that the principles in the Code are structured by use case, statement of principle, considerations for use, and hard cases. He then explained core values throughout the Code include attribution of sources and clear marking of fair use inclusions, fair use as a tool for equity, fair use as a tool for accessibility, and linking out as an inadequate approach.  

Carys Craig discussed how Canadian educators could apply the Code. She explained the similarities and minor differences between U.S. fair use and Canadian fair dealing.

Peter Jaszi discussed opportunities for applying the Code in the UK and EU. He explained the fair use and dealing are outlier doctrines, but a large and growing handful of countries have generally equivalent structures, and he outlined the relationship between North American fair use/dealing and British law. Jaszi ended by outlining the next steps, including OER practitioners demanding interpretations of existing law that provide the greatest possible scope for their activities.

A link to the recording can be found here.