A Language Lab Director's Guide to

Language labs have always had to deal with copyright/intellectual property issues because most of us are in the copying business: we have to make the analog audio and video, and now digital, "ancillaries" to textbooks generally available for student use. Because the textbooks are usually published, or even (in principle) adopted with the lab in mind, publishers and lab directors are used to negotiating the rights to copy or otherwise distribute these lab materials.

As the nature of the materials changes, and also the lab director's job changes as we move towards digitization and helping faculty with multimedia projects,  it's a good idea to reaffirm some of the old concepts and clarify (if possible) some new ones.

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(1) Textbook ancillary materials. One should always get permission to copy/distribute materials in writing, and abide by it. The lab director might want to draw up a tentative agreement for publishers or other copyright holders to sign, releasing precisely the rights the lab usually wants (e.g. a specific number of copies for lab use or instructors, a particular method of distributing materials for home use). But the publisher may have his/her own version of what's permitted. Here is a sample form for requesting copyright clearance for tapes or digitizing.

Permissions range from very broad--
    "McGraw-Hill is pleased to grant you permission to duplicate, network, and/or digitize the accompanying audiocassettes, audio CDs, and/or MHELT software" for students in the program so long as no profit is involved and the book is being used in the course...

(quoted from the inside first page of the tapescript, which is to be mailed to the company to activate the agreement)

--to complex and restrictive, to nonexistent. You may end up with some courses where students must go to the lab to listen to purchased originals which can't be copied,  while in others you could (in principle) copy the whole set for home use by each student, or you have (in fact) all the audio and video online for student access from home.
    Even though we are moving towards online "virtual labs" of streaming audio, it seems that there is always room for a few audiotapes, to accommodate publishers who reserve the right to digitize the materials.
Some tips:

A catalogue specifying what tapes are in each series and the copying policies for each series is helpful to staff and students in sorting out what can be copied when.

A labelling software program allows a lab distributing take-home tapes, diskettes, and CDs to obey specific strictures, including copyright notice on each copy and such remarks as "This tape must be returned to the lab in order to obtain the next tape in the series" or "Please erase or delete this program when you have finished using the textbook."

(2) Commercial/broadcast audio and video tapes and recordings.

Material taped from broadcast TV or radio is subject to severe limitations in "fair use."  It can be played once or twice in class (face-to-face teaching) within 10 days of the original broadcast, and kept a total of 40 days for review by the instructor. After that, it should be erased; if the instructor wants a copy, he/she should contact the producers of the film or radio program to obtain a commercial copy or ask permission to keep the off-broadcast tape. (It is probably legal, however, to use the off-air copy if it is needed between the time the commercial copy is ordered and the time the commercial copy arrives).

Cable and satellite TV channels are separate categories from broadcast. There are no set guidelines for taping these; therefore, any taping at all may be impermissible. For example, any taping of HBO programming is considered illegal. Our special problem with language labs is foreign-language satellite TV. Channels like TV5 purchase programming from a number of different sources, and cannot give permission to tape such materials.

On the other hand, some producers of foreign-language TV (e.g. Deutsche Welle, Univision) are willing to give quite generous permissions to educational institutions to keep and re-use off-air tapings of certain programs--often the most useful ones, such as news programs. On the other hand, you should be aware that programming such as soccer games is strongly protected by copyright and should not be taped or re-used. It is very much worthwhile to contact any station coming into the language lab to ask for such blanket permissions.

A commercially purchased video or audio recording is supposed to be "for private use." It can however be used in face-to-face teaching situations as well. Note that "face-to-face teaching" is NOT the same thing as "educational purposes." A video purchased in this way can't be presented in public except as part of classroom teaching: it can't be used as part of a "film festival" or any advertised event, even if the event is very educational and no admission is charged. Audio recordings can, however, be played in public.

Some educational vendors sell videos specifically with "public performance rights" allowing them to be played for non-paying audiences at educational institutions. Without such permission, the video's use is limited to home use or classroom use.

Commercial videos may not be copied, broadcast, or networked without explicit permission of the publisher. It is not legal to make a "backup copy" of a purchased recording. Video and audio recordings are sold "for the life of the medium," that is, one has the use of the item only until it wears out.

A taped reading or other performance of a copyrighted work also requires copyright permission. An audiotape of a reading from a textbook, or of a piece of contemporary literature, might be used in a class but ought not be copied for students without permission! A student performance of a copyrighted work (e.g. a play or song) can be taped but only one copy can be kept of this tape, unless permission is obtained.

(3)  Commercial software. Generally software comes with an explicit description of the license allowed.  This usually includes the right to make a backup or "archival copy" and may (or may not!) allow installation of the program on more than one machine belonging to the purchaser provided it is used only on one machine at a time.
      A software license for installation on a lab server or on more than one lab machine should be carefully adhered to.
      If not enough licenses are available for all the machines on a network, consider either getting network-management software that will meter the use (allowing say only 5 persons at a time to use the program for which you have 5 licenses, and telling the sixth user to try again later) or a partial installation on the computers that requires a physical CD to run, thereby limiting use to the number of CDs purchased.
     Why are software licenses more generous about backups, etc.,  than permissions for video or audio material? Because the software always needs to be upgraded eventually, so the market for replacements is built in even if you reinstall from your archival copy several times.

(4)  Images, sound, video on the Web. The Web is of course a fabulous source for language teaching, full of those color pictures, audio bits, and even video that used to be difficult or impossible to collect; moreover, the student can move among them at will, so that the whole feeling of lab use is quite different. The next step is for the instructor to want to save these materials both to facilitate access and in order to edit them or present them in a context targeting the needs of a particular course. And how delightful to include images and texts scanned from books as well.....
    Again, the key is to ask permission, whether from the owner of a web image or the copyright holder of a print image  or text, recorded song, etc. The owner will probably be glad to be included in a teaching website, probably in return for a formal acknowledgement of the source of the image, bit of music, etc. Here is a sample form for obtaining formal permission.
    An advantage to asking permission is that the copyright owner may well have some other input for your website. Looking at your  site, he or she might correct a matter of fact, add information, or contribute a better scan of the image to suit your format!
    An alternative for web material is of course simply to link to the online site that has the image, video, or text to be presented. It's still a good idea to correspond with the owner of the site, so that you will be notified if the site address or contents changes. This is especially important if you make frequent or extensive use of the site.
    What about "fair use" and "face-to-face classroom teaching" on the Web? It can be argued that the creation of a website accessible only to students by password (such as those that can be created with course management systems) simulates the face-to-face classroom; this has been recognized by the 2002 TEACH Act.

(5) Converting recordings to a more usable format. What about making new cassette copies of those old reel-to-reel tapes? Or VHS copies of the 16mm films that instructors still want to use? Or--an important item for language labs--converting foreign-standard tapes to NTSC? If you have a copy that can't be played, don't you have a right to produce a copy that can be played?
    The questions are not rhetorical. The short answer is "no, you can't do it without permission."
    Consider this: When you convert a PAL or SECAM videocassette to NTSC, you lose much of the picture quality; you start with a color and definition much better than the usual NTSC, and end up with a quality worse than what is expected. It's much better to purchase a foreign-standard VCR and use it in conjunction with a projector, which will give you an excellent picture.

    However, because of the speed with which media formats are changing, the law (Title 17, Ch. 1, sec. 108)  does offer some relief on this point.
    Basically, certain kinds of institutions have the right to reproduce certain kinds of materials for purposes of security or preservation, if there is no other way to get a copy at a fair price and the materials cannot be preserved or played any other way. So if you don't have cassette machines any more, and your institution qualifies, you have the right to make copies you can play. Even truer for reel-to-reel. Most language labs probably don't fit the description of a "library or archive" under this act, but some of them may.
    Also, one would have to ascertain that copies were not available at a fair price and one would be obliged to label the copies regarding copyright if the tape itself did not include copyright identifcation.

Judy Shoaf, jshoaf@clas.ufl.edu ©2003