Written by: James Vincent
Published by: The Verge
MBA News Digest Comment: None.
Extracted Content: After American University in Washington, DC made the decision to move classes online this semester in response to the pandemic, it sent teaching staff guidance about how their work would change. When Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at AU specializing in intellectual property, received the documents, he naturally decided to check out the copyright provisions. What he found was strange.
AU’s policy said that if Sinnreich or any other teacher recorded their lessons or lectures through software like Skype or Google Hangouts, the teacher would own the copyright to those recordings. But if they used the university-provided software — a popular learning management system called Blackboard — the university would retain the rights. “It stood out for me in a way it wouldn’t necessarily stand out for people who don’t study copyright law,” Sinnreich tells The Verge.