Are online courses copyrighted?

Online courses are protected by copyright.

legal ground

Article 9 of the Copyright Law includes:

(1) me;

(2) Other citizens, legal persons or other organizations that enjoy copyright according to this Law.

Article 10 Copyright includes the following personal rights and property rights:

(a) the right to publish, that is, the right to decide whether the work is open;

(2) the right of signature, that is, the right to show one's identity and sign one's name on a work;

(3) the right to modify, that is, the right to modify or authorize others to modify a work;

(four) the right to protect the integrity of the work, that is, the right to protect the work from distortion and tampering;

(5) the right of reproduction, that is, the right to make one or more copies of a work by means of printing, photocopying, rubbing, audio recording, video recording, reproduction or reproduction;

(6) the right of distribution, that is, the right to provide the original or duplicate of a work to the public by way of sale or gift;

(7) the right to rent, that is, the right to temporarily license others to use film works, works created by methods similar to filming, and computer software, except that computer software is not the main object of rent;

(8) The right to exhibit, that is, the right to publicly display the original or duplicate of an artistic work or photographic work;

(nine) the right to perform, that is, the right to publicly perform a work and publicly broadcast the performance of the work in various ways;

(10) the right of projection, that is, the right to publicly copy art, photography, movies and works created by methods similar to filming through projectors, slide projectors and other technical equipment;

(11) Broadcasting right, that is, the right to publicly broadcast or disseminate works by wireless means, broadcast works to the public by wired or rebroadcast means, and broadcast works to the public through loudspeakers or other similar tools for transmitting symbols, sounds and images;

(12) the right of information network communication, that is, the right to provide works to the public by wired or wireless means, so that the public can obtain works at the time and place they choose;

The copyright ownership of online courses needs to be analyzed in combination with factors such as teachers' teaching methods and online course carriers. First of all, before the online class is taught, teachers usually need to prepare teaching materials, such as handouts and ppt. This kind of teaching materials are generally produced by teachers according to the syllabus and teaching tasks of the subject. If this kind of material reflects the teachers' personal intellectual judgment and choice, and shows the individual characteristics of each teacher, that is, it meets the requirements of originality in the copyright law, then it can constitute a written work according to the Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law of People's Republic of China (PRC). However, the content of the syllabus involved in the handout or PPT is not created by teachers, so it cannot be protected as the content created by teachers.

Secondly, in the online classroom teaching stage, it is necessary to analyze the situation in combination with the online classroom teaching form. At present, there are two main modes of online education, one is online live teaching, that is, teachers teach online in real time with the help of live broadcast platform. In this mode, teachers can express the teaching content in an impromptu and oral language form with pre-written lecture notes or PPT. At this time, the content of impromptu teaching can constitute oral works, thus being protected by copyright law. The other mode is to play the recorded video, that is, the teacher uploads the recorded teaching video in advance for students to use through the network. In this mode, on the one hand, if the recorded lecture content is improvised, the lecture content also constitutes an oral work; On the other hand, because the recorded lecture video itself belongs to the recording of continuous related images and images accompanied by sound, it constitutes a video product according to regulations. At the same time, the judge pointed out that teachers may be protected as performers if they read their speeches or textbooks "by the book", whether they are webcasting or recording lectures.