Website that is linked to Blackboard

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  • An instructor finds information on a website that he wants to use for his class, he can link it to his course website and that is not a problem.

    The question is, he fears the site is only temporary, so, can he save the information in order to preserve it and continue to use it for his class?
  • To determine the answer to your question, I think more information is needed. Questions that come to mind for me include: What kind of "information" would be saved? Is it more factual or more creative? Is it available for purchase? How much of the site is needed?

    However, one option that sidesteps this copying issue is checking to see if it's crawled by the Internet Archive, online at http://www.archive.org/. They seem quite reliable, so I would think that might be a relatively secure alternative.
  • It is a documentary presentation (approximately 6 slides with text) which is currently available on the web. It may be available for purchase...but cost prohibitive. The instructor would want to save the whole thing. Weighing the four factors, it seems to be a fair use since it would be for educational purposes, it is more factual than creative. However the long term use of the entire work weighs against fair use. The market effect is questionable...I would think it is such a short presentation it would not be something that would be sold. However, to get the permission would probably be cost prohibitive since it was created by a television network.
  • I hadn't responded again earlier because I was hoping someone else would jump in. This is kind of a tricky situation, but I'm a bit concerned about your market analysis. I don't think it's a given that it would be cost prohibitive just because it was created by a television network; you may have additional information that would lead to that conclusion, but I don't think that alone would be enough. Because it sounds like it would be difficult for the network to monetize the presentation, they may be very glad to see it networked elsewhere, as long as the person or institution archiving it agreed to limit their reuse (i.e. agreeing to limit to educational uses or some such).

    Again, I would encourage linking to the Internet Archive if at all possible.

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