Coplyright:

• Seek written permission, aka ‘consent forms’, before recording audio, video or taking photos
• Agree beforehand on whether the recording can be shared, either with a class, or the wider public, or over the Internet
• Educational institutions may not make clear their copyright rules; but the rules still exist, and such recordings are not permitted
• It is the student who brings copyright law into operation the moment he/she starts taping

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Prerna, a 20-year-old Delhi University student, records some of her class lectures. She does this in the hope of revising the classroom sessions later. She doesn’t seek permission from her teachers; she simply tapes what they say secretly on her cellphone. This is something her classmates do too. When Prerna makes the tapes, she also has in mind her younger sister, Shefali, who is interested in the same topics and sometimes listens to the lectures. “I can’t say I revise every lecture when I get home, but I like to record some important lectures, like those by visiting faculty, sometimes for my sister, sometimes for my own record,” she says. What Prerna and the many other students in universities and schools perhaps don’t know is that, when they press the ‘Record’ button, they are setting in motion a long chain reaction involving copyright and privacy issues. Universities and higher education institutes are only just beginning to grapple with the ‘problem’. And each is doing so differently, in the absence of clear rules or guidelines. In May, the faculty of law at Delhi University issued a notice banning students from taping lectures. It warned of action against those doing so. Here, the institution was not raising copyright issues as much as trying to enforce discipline: it found many students missing class and making up by copying recordings from those who attended.
IIT Delhi, too, has had to grapple with the issue. Students’ tapes here have posed a different kind of challenge: teachers have found that what they present in class is being taught at private coaching classes that help hundreds of aspirants clear the tough IIT entrance exam. These institutions are known to get their hands on the questions regularly put to students at IITs. The teachers say these questions, and often entire class tutorials, are sold to the private institutes by students. The going rate is said to be Rs 150 per page of a tut­orial—good pickings for a student. “The reason IIT entrance exams are tough is because we never pose questions picked from the back of another book. The test consists entirely of new sets of problems that we come up with,” says Dr Nalin Pant, a professor of chemistry at IIT Delhi.
IIT teachers have tried to stem the practice, for instance by placing their model assignments behind a glass barrier to make photography difficult. But it’s a cat-and-mouse game: no one can be sure who’s winning. Cellphone cameras keep getting better and students keep finding new ways to beat the system. “I am not in favour of being hyper-paranoid about intellectual property when it comes to my students,” says Dr Pant. Strict rules, such as disallowing cellphones in the institute, won’t work either, he says. “This is a university, not a top secret facility. There’s simply nothing you can do about such recordings. But I’m not scared—teachers must create an interpersonal dynamic unique to each class so that a taped session will simply not be a good enough substitute for attending lectures,” he says.
A lot depends on how teachers take the challenge: Will students simply stop showing up if technology permits them to stay away? Or will institutes up the ante, forcing the students, even at post-graduate levels, to meet stricter attendance norms? Even legally speaking, the issue is grey.
The copyright for “oral communication”, say a lecture, experts say, rests with the person delivering the lecture, or with the institution at which the lecture is delivered. But a lecture can be a subject of copyright issues only after it has been taped, not when the words are simply spoken. Therefore, it is the surreptitiously taping student who makes the copyright issue arise in the first place. That’s when things get murkier. “There is a copyright the moment it is recorded. So, will the copyright rest with the teacher and the student jointly, since it’s the student doing the taping? Will the institute enforce the copyright, and how? What if a student posts the video or audiotape on YouTube or Facebook? Each situation has a different implication in law,” says Shamnad Basheer, chair professor, intellectual property, National University of Juridical Sciences.
In a way, taped conversations compare with classroom notes jotted down by students. Writing really fast, some students can get everything down on paper. The trouble arises only if they subsequently make photocopies of these notes. “In the same way, some people have excellent memories and can write, in an exam, exactly what they read in a book. Technically, reproducing what you have remembered by heart amounts to making an unauthorised copy of a book. That is why, under the law, students giving exams are especially exempt,” says Prof V.K. Unni, who teaches intellectual property rights and law at IIM Calcutta.
He says that even recordings that are transient, or temporary, if made without permission, technically run afoul of the law. Putting up a surreptitiously taped lecture on YouTube is inescapably a violation. Mostly though, this doesn’t end up in court—other issues take centrestage. “Generally, courts have been approached with unauthorised downloads, misuse of information shared with the public on websites, and use of recordings to defame a person, not students making tapes of lectures,” he says. Basheer points out that the teacher does have a right to prevent her lecture from being taped, even though there’s nothing preventing the student from recording it. However, these recordings cannot be subsequently used—sharing on Facebook or among friends would be a violation.
At times, students like Paromita Dasgupta, who’s doing masters in heritage conservation in Delhi, have explicit, but oral, permission of their teachers to tape some sessions. “A lot of heritage conservation coursework is conducted in the field. Even some exams are conducted outdoors. It’s impossible to make notes, so we make copies of the field visits on audio or video using cameras or cellphones. It’s something our teachers support and encourage,” she says.
Many teachers say they do not mind students recording lectures. Prof Ash­wini Kumar Bansal, dean, faculty of law, Delhi University, says that even if an institute is liberal with copyright, it does not change the entitlement of the teacher who holds the copyright. “Legally, it appears that the teacher holds the rights to his lecture. Whether the fact that public money is used to set up an institute makes a difference or not is a matter courts have to take a view on.” Indeed, institutions would, one day soon, pursue students in courts of law for such infringement.
Source: Outlook India