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Palomar Policies

Palomar College Technology Policies

This section contains links to important College policy statements.

Distance Learning Policies

Copyright Policies

This section contains links to copyright issues and resources, especially those related to the TEACH Act of 2002.

To use multimedia elements online, that is, anything that might be displayed or performed in a traditional classroom, you have three choices with regard to copying the materials:

  1. TEACH Act authorization
  2. Fair Use
  3. Permission of the copyright holder

Click here to access a description of how these are handled at Palomar College.

With respect to printed materials intended for student reading: If it is a journal article, we recommend linking to it in the legally licensed journal databases maintained by the college.  Click here to access the journal databases.  If the article or text cannot be found in one of the databases or on the Internet on a publicly available site, then you must either make a fair use argument for duplicating the textual material or get permission from the copyright holder.

The TEACH Act

Basically, the TEACH Act of 2002 harmonized the rights with respect to displaying copyrighted materials between classroom and distance computer-mediated instructors.  The following links describe the effects of the Act, which was signed into law in November 2002.

Be sure to go through the NCSU Teach Act checklist before requesting Academic Technology to digitize materials to be placed within a copyright protected area on the Internet.  Basically, your materials must meet the following criteria:

  1. They must be integral to your teaching of the course, and not simply background or enrichment materials.
  2. They must not have been produced for the distance education market in the first place.
  3. They must be no longer than a typical class period.
  4. They must be legally obtained.
  5. There is not already be a digitized version of the materials already available to your students.
  6. They must be available only to the students enrolled in the class for which they are intended and only for the term for which that class is being actively taught.
  7. You must disclose full copyright information about the materials, along with a warning prohibiting duplication.
  8. You must make every reasonable effort to prevent duplication and redistribution.

Resources Related to Copyright

Related Resources

Palomar College Links