Hello:
This week, I've had the opportunity to look at many different and interesting (even for an English major!) science learning objects...some of which take a lot of time and cost a chunk of money to produce.
A little background information might help put my question in context.
When I read the copyright statements/terms of use/terms of fair use statements on many educational sites (for example OWL at Purdue) I become very concerned about linking to some of the excellent objects that we could clearly use to support our courses.
Conversations with our copyright officer make me even more concerned about what is fair, educational, and non-commerical (a course is, afterall, commercial) use for on-line courses. We do ask to use a specific item in an on-line course, naturally, but--to give just a recent example--we were denied permission because we were wanting to link to a resource from within a WebCT-delivered course.
So, my question: How are folks in the science community, or those teaching online science courses, able to use science learning objects in their online courses?
Copyright laws are (in principle) the same, but the application various by country...so just in case it's useful information, I'm in Canada.
Many thanks, Cheers, Chris