JISC Legal : e-Learning

This guidance is designed to help institutions deal with consent management when sharing personal data across and between institutions and external service providers.

In this guide, you’ll find summaries of the key legal considerations of using Facebook in an FE and HE context.

A simplified step-by-step guide to Copyright Law for FE and HE.

A simplified step-by-step guide to intellectual property law for UK colleges and universities.

Jason Miles-Campbell, our Service Manager, provides an informative video about licensing for educational resources, including what licences are available, and considerations in making the choice. 

This paper is written in the context of the JISC and Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources Programme (Phase 2), and aims to address some of the background issues regarding management of intellectual property rights (IPR) in UK universities.

This paper considers the legal issues which arise in relation to the taking of or possession of images (still and moving) of children for use in an Open Education Resource. 

 In the world of intellectual property, there is no getting away from the fact that clearing rights in audio-visual resources is rarely straightforward. Often, those resources have multiple rights holders, and a commercial value. Attempting to clear all the rights for release under an open licence may be possible in some cases, but it is likely to mean a large investment of time, and possible cash as well.

This podcast, created for the JISC Innovation and e-Learning Conference 2010, explores FAQs on the legal aspects of recording lectures.

This guidance examines the legal implications of recording lectures at UK FE and HE institutions, focusing mainly on the issues of copyright and consent.

This guidance document examines the Digital Economy Act 2010 and its implications for universities and colleges in the UK.

JISC Legal's Jason Miles-Campbell presented "Five Top Copyright Law Tips for Colleges and Universities" as part of RSC Scotland South & West's RSCtv programme on Tuesday, 9 March 2010..

This useful presentation is a recording of Jason Miles-Campbell on RSC TV. 

The legal issues which arise when using e-assessment in UK FE and HE.

This Checklist has been specifically created by JISC Legal to assist tutors delivering Web 2.0 technologies.

Essentials guide for FE and HE on ISP liability for online content.

Disability discrimination law applies to the services including educational services an institution provides to its staff, students, and third parties.

Essentials guide for practical legal information on the laws in the UK affecting e-repositories.

To stream a feature film there are two issues involved, and two possible sets of permission required .... (cont)

 The short answer is that taking photograph of artwork (being a copy of the artwork) is likely to be copyright infringement, unless ... (cont) 

Copyright in a work is not infringed by lending by an educational establishment. However you may find that a restriction ... (cont)

Ownership of copyright is key to the use of works created in universities and colleges, as the owner has control over their reuse.  ... (cont)

We are pleased to announce the launch of JISC Legal Plus - a new staff development service bringing JISC Legal's expertise to your institution at competitive prices...  (cont'd)

This is a decision for the institution to make. There have certainly been various news articles highlighting privacy and data protection concerns related to Facebook, and similar issues apply to other external social networking sites ... (cont)

 JISC Legal offer you a variety of resources to help you do this ... (cont)

The differences between the 2.5 and 3.0 suites of Creative Commons licences are summarised below, using the ‘unported’ (international) version as examples: ... (cont'd)

The Equality Act 2010 places an obligation on educational service providers not to discriminate against students in the provision of its services ... (cont)

The following may represent potential barriers to the release of open educational resources ... (cont)

Although there are many benefits to the adoption of an open educational resource approach with regards to teaching and learning ... (cont)

 In short where the institution does not own the copyright in materials and where the copyright period has not expired, permission, a licence or ... (cont)

 There are, in fact, distinct, jurisdiction-specific versions of the CC licences ... (cont)

Belief that copyright permission has been granted is no defence to infringement of copyright if no valid permission was, in fact, given.

(NLA) v Meltwater - In the particular circumstances of commercial news headlines and their monitoring and copying for commercial gain much of the content will attract copyright protection.

Vince Cable has announced that controversial plans to force ISPs to block websites that host copyright infringing material are to be dumped. 

A data controller is able to anonymise originally-personal data to make it free of data protection law constraints.

A new law that comes into force today (14 June 2011) in England and Wales will make it easier to protect patent and design rights.

The EU has taken a step towards common rules for cracking down on those who sexually abuse children and post images of the abuse on the internet.

The High Court recently decided, in relation to copyright law, that the term ‘making available’ to the public, that the 'making available' happens where the servers send the files, rather than where received.

In an Israeli court case this month, the user of Creative Commons licensed photographs was found to have infringed copyright by creating and selling collages using those images without complying with the CC BY-NC-ND licence's conditions.

This significant case confirms that copyright can subsist in a newspaper headline. It also confirms that a user that pays for a web monitoring service requires a licence from the newspaper or the NLA.

The controversial Digital Economy Act (DEA) is to be reviewed by the High Court and subject to a Parliamentary enquiry

A recent official announcement by David Cameron states UK intellectual property laws are to be reviewed to make them “fit for the internet age”. 

Data protection law needs to provide more clarity on what actually constitutes personal data.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued specific guidance for education providers, employers, workers, service providers and service users.  

A consultation by the GEO seeks views on proposals for draft regulations on the new public sector equality duty.

The third sector will see copyright exemptions for public playing of sound recordings and music removed from April 2010

Removing potentially libellous material posted by website users as soon as possible can protect from liability

Institutions falling to report data breaches can face financial penalties from April 2010

Illegal downloading of copyrighted material is being tackled by the UK Government with a new Digital Economy Bill.

JISC Digital Media - A JISC Advance Service - Links Recording Lectures Webcast

This publication by JISC infoNet, the Association for Learning Technology and the Higher Education Academy explores whether e-Learning is delivering tangible benefits for learners, teachers and institutions.

This collection of materials written by Web2Rights, provides briefings, guides, templates, models and sources of further information in order to assist open educational resource (OER) projects get to grips with intellectual property issues at the outset.

This project will provide IPR and licensing support for JISC/HEA funded OER Phase 2 projects with particular emphasis on the use of Creative Commons Licences.

A resource from the Higher Education Academy English Subject Centre aimed at those developing courses which suggests that it is necessary to consider copyright clearance from the start.

Guidance for public sector organisationsaims to make current equality law more consistent, clearer and easier to follow in order to make society fairer.

The Strategic Content Alliance has produced a useful IPR toolkit covering the IPR background, practical tools, template policy statements, case studies and links to further reading.

This useful presentation is a recording of Jason Miles-Campbell on RSC TV.