Abstract:

The great technological development of the last fifteen years has led to a boom in the use of new technological applications in education that has completely transformed the teaching function. This phenomenon has been increased with the adaptation of the educational system in order to fulfil the requirements of the European Higher Education Area, and it is obvious in all methods of education (in classroom modality, in distance education, and in the online modality).

This fact linked to the need of providing resources to enable students to achieve the development of their independent learning skills and other competences in the current educational system, raises some issues regarding the type of resources that can be diffused by professors through these virtual platforms to get this purpose. Although in most cases, the diffusion is made through private virtual platforms, the use of documents that may be protected by copyright might generate liabilities to the college and the professor who has provided a work or fragment of it since this use could infringe copyright.

In this paper we aim to clarify when this practice injures copyright because it is essential to determine when a work can be used or not through virtual platforms. With this purpose it is necessary that we consider some judicial pronouncements that have made an approach to the matter and in some of those cases the universities have been sentenced to pay to the author or the publisher a high compensation through the subsidiary liability way.

Keywords:

copyright, virtual platforms, higher education, liability