1 of 5

Helping instructors�protect their copyrights

Administering takedown requests to tutoring websites

Jennifer Zerkee and Don Taylor

2 of 5

What is the Issue?

How did we handle faculty copyright complaints?

Takedown assistance requests over time

What’s next at SFU?

We’re putting together a webpage that provides more information for instructors about this issue and the takedown process, as well as suggestions for ways to mark their work with a copyright statement and language for communicating with students about copyright, and a webform for instructors to submit takedown support requests.
A student employee in the library will work on these requests for us. The student will search the sites for the content and compile a spreadsheet for each course with the filename, URL, and so on for each uploaded file that they find.
We will format the DMCA letter following its legal requirements and submit it to the site along with the spreadsheet. When we receive a response, we’ll forward that to the instructor.
We haven’t launched this site or process yet, so we will need to give it some time and see how it goes. It is possible that the demand could still eventually outscale our ability to manage these, at which point we’ll consider another approach, but for now we feel pretty good about how this should streamline the process and make it more manageable for us.