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Does anyone know if schools and collages in the UK are legally allowed to make a digital copy of a DVD for educational purposes? For example, could you make a digital copy of a DVD, and then store that digital copy on a shared drive accessible to any member of the teaching staff?

Hi Edugeekists! Does anyone know how a school might stand legally should they show a currently popular (musical) film at the school's Xmas ball? I choose my legalese carefully Cheers Andrew

I know this thread has been posted many times, but I was just wondering what schools do for DVD playback? Currently we are buying PowerDVD OEM for each PC which needs DVD playback, and locally installing it . In the past I have always used MPC for DVD playback on XP but I am a little concerned about the legalities of doing this in a School. Obviously a free codec like ffdshow would be ideal as it would allow editing through windows movie maker as well for MP4 files but through reading a lot of the posts on this forum I am confused about the fact that an open source implementation of it still is breaking the mpeg patent (or something like that!) making it illegal :s Anyhow as you can probably see I'm mightily confused about the whole subject now!

Does anyone have a definitive answer to this one? I have been asked to access a student's email account to provide evidence for a complaint. I don't know the nature of the complaint, but it's probably an investigation of bullying or general 'larking about'. I refused to give access to the account without the student's consent, on the grounds that this would breach their Human Right to Privacy. TBH I don't really give a monkey's about their Human Rights, before you all start accusing me of being a left-wing pansy, but this was the advice I was given some years ago at a seminar given by a legal firm. Their advice was essentially that a student doesn't give up any of their rights to privacy or under the DPA just because they happen to be students. On the flip-side, our Head is arguing (possibly quite reasonably) that the email is on our system, they're students, and he'll insist that they give consent, but he doesn't see why he should have to. Anyone know the answer? Even more pertinently, can someone point me towards some published advice on this? Thanks.

Does anyone know if we are legally bound to keep and store student documents once they've left? Does anyone keep documents or do you just delete them? Thanks

Looks like the Tennessee School Districts are being threatened with a law suit by the ACLU for filtering to heavily. The sites in question are sites themed around lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues that would not be classified as pornographic so blocking them is questionable. In this case the suite seems justified but if this case goes foward and is won it could lead to a nasty pressedent which would require truckloads more paperwork to protect the filterers from legal repricussions if their filters accidently banned something, at least inside the law suit happy US. Original Source: Slashdot | Worst Censorware Blocks Cannot be Fixed

Some changes to the UK Computer Crime laws comes into effect on the 1st of October. The Register has the details: UK cybercrime overhaul finally comes into effect ? The Register But basically: The maximum penalty for "unauthorised access to a computer system" has been raised from six months to two years in prison. Denial of service attacks are now clearly criminal, with a maximum penalty of up to ten years behind bars. The amended act makes it an offence to distribute hacking tools for criminal purposes. Spyblog has a more indepth analysis: Computer Misuse Act amendments come into force on 1st October 2008 - Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk A colour coded diff can be viewed here: Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18) - consolidated version Review and update your School Computer Usage Policies as appropriate.