Intellectual property
Helping you understand your rights and responsibilities
From newspaper articles being used without permission to trademarks being copied into documents, it’s impossible for Glow to check every piece of content to make sure it doesn’t breach intellectual property rights.
However, the system will help make sure everyone understands their rights and responsibilities. Here’s how:
- Signing up for acceptable use - when signing up to Glow, all users will have to agree to an Acceptable Use Policy. This has clear guidelines on intellectual property and possible infringements.
- Training - intellectual property rights (IPR) will be covered during mentor training and the subsequent local training.
- Reminders - every user will be sent regular reminders on IPR.
- Dealing with infringements - any infringement of IPR will be dealt with promptly, including the removal of materials which contravene the rules.
Bringing you more rights to use copyrighted material
LTS will work with CoSLA and copyright holders to obtain licences which will allow as free as possible use of copyrighted material within Glow.
LTS will also seek to implement a Creative Commons licence for the material it owns. Under a Creative Commons licence a user is free to:
- copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
- make derivative work
- make commercial use of the work
under the following conditions:
- The original author must be given credit.
- The licence terms of this work must be made clear to others with any reuse or distribution.
Any of these conditions can be waived if permission is obtained from the copyright holder.
LTS will seek to encourage all contributors of shared material to use a Creative Commons licence. More information about this type of licence is on the Creative Commons website.
Commercial content from the Glow virtual learning environment
The virtual learning environment (VLE) 'knows' which users have appropriately licensed commercial content. This content will only be visible to users who have a licence.
Glow will not affect the ability of schools and local authorities to purchase content from commercial providers.
LTS will work with all commercial providers to ensure that they understand Glow and the inherent opportunities. We will promote the use of the full range of Scottish taxonomies which are published through the Becta Studio.
As Glow rolls out, LTS will ensure that that further advice and guidance will be issued to the industry.
Commercial content from the Glow content showcase
By mid 2007 we will manage a ‘content showcase’. This will be an online window to educational software with descriptions, product shots and trial and demo versions, easily browsed and searched by category keywords and with signposts to the purchase facilities of each software provider.
Shibboleth
As the lead technology organisation in Scottish education, LTS will work with Becta to participate in the UK-wide Shibboleth service. This service facilitates controlled access to content from participating providers under licences.
Users will be able to access third-party content by authenticating through Glow’s Single Sign-on service. Since Glow is designed to be accessed any time anywhere, it will be possible to access third-party content on the same basis.
No longer will a school licence be restricted to accessing the service on the school premises but will be available from home, libraries and anywhere an authorised user cares to access the content.