Teacher Convicted for Linking to Pirated Answer Sheets

While not the smartest thing I've seen a teacher do, I certainly don't agree with suing the pants off the guy either.

A Dutch teacher has been convicted for linking to pirated copies of math answer sheets stored on file-storage sites. The Amsterdam court ordered the teacher to remove the hyperlinks from his personal website and pay the litigation costs. According to the verdict the teacher facilitated students’ copyright infringements, this despite the fact that downloading for personal use is legal in the Netherlands.

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But it was for purely educational purposes.

Since it was online, it's a bad thing. Teachers have been copying materials that say "Do Not Copy" for decades. School budgets can't support buying 100+ copies of a few page material. So, they buy a few and make a 100 copies. If he would have downloaded and copied the material as a hardcopy, he'd be fine.

So in the future, kids would have to pay for answers in their homework. And the teacher are not allowed to tell them what answer did they got right or wrong.

I've been away from college for about 6 years but I would get material all the time from teachers that would tell me ... "you didn't get this from me." Not quite the same as putting it on a personal web site (read evidence) but I think this happens all the time at schools. I mean not everyone can afford $50 to $200 book and even the educational edition of some stuff is $600. That is a lot of money for something many students will use one semester and never touch again.

Ironically, this sets education back since teachers for years have been making photocopies of answers and handing them out ot students in class. Generally, libraries even let you photocopy books as long as you are photocopying limited 'sections' or a limited number of 'pages' and not making a copy of the entire-book. Interestingly, I suspect this teacher on his website might not have even said 'Go to this link to download the ENTIRE SOLUTIONS MANUAL' and might have linked to a pdf containing 3 pages of the solution manual. If that were the case, this would be entirely permissible offline and has been routinely done offline for years. Technology makes it easier to do online.

I love that they couldn't even prove this guy was the original uploader...

I don't know Dutch law, but I think Fair Use would have shielded the teacher in America.

Dreaz said:

I don't know Dutch law, but I think Fair Use would have shielded the teacher in America.

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100% wrong.

Fair Use is not a free pass to use whatever copyrighted material you want for free just because it's for "educational purposes" otherwise schools would simply make their own copies of books... and yes I've had college professors photocopy large amounts of a particular book and hand them out (that doesn't mean it's legal).

Fair use has 4 major guidelines that ALL must be qualified
1. Who's using it, this is where educational/non-profit comes into play, but this is only 1 of 4 requirements.

2. Nature of the work, this is so some out of print book publisher can't hold hostage information, or if you're making copies of facts as opposed to creativity pieces (i.e. copying a picture of a lunar eclipse vs. copying the first chapter of the Twilight series)

3. The amount copied, so did you just copy a few graphs or pictures that were used? Or did you copy an entire chapter

crap hit reply accidentally (god damn laptop mouse pad)

continuing

4. Does your copying affect the value of said work with regards to the publisher. So if you copy an entire text book, you're not allowing the original owner of said work to make any money off it.

This teacher basically had a digital copy of the entire book, so while this teacher would have protection under the first requirement and possibly the second (although that's debatable) the 3rd and 4th requirements are grossly violated