UD SUPPORTS THE LAW OF THE LAND

Being a member of an educational institution does not give carte blanche to copy and distribute any materials desired.

A body of law exists to protect the rights of copyright holders for any material that is fixed in tangible form: written, recorded, videotaped, filmed, transcribed, published, painted, printed, published on the web, sent as
e-mail or submitted to an electronic mailing list or bulletin board.

Intellectual property laws provide a copyright holder with a temporary monopoly on his or her work. But, after that time period, the material is available for anyone to use.

Why do University faculty, students and staff need to understand copyright issues? In an academic community, individuals need to take responsibility for learning the basics of copyright laws and regulations because, under certain circumstances, individuals can be held personally liable if they break these laws.

There are people whose job it is to scour the Internet, looking for violations of intellectual property laws. Some of them spend considerable time and energy developing automated tools that identify potential violations.

In fact, because they are trying to set precedents in this new area of the law, the copyright holders
for images, movies and music are often among the most aggressive in terms of enforcing their copyright in the digital age. Using new provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), copyright holders are even pursuing those who try to break copy-protection methods that owners have placed on digital media containing a copyrighted work.

The University supports the enforcement of the law of the land. And, it is just as important that all UD faculty, staff and students comply with these laws.

Therefore, it is each individual's responsibility to be sure that he or she is not breaking the law when distributing photocopies, copying material from another web site and publishing it, using a sound clip or a cartoon in a class or otherwise making use of copyrighted works.