Is it normal for an instructor to charge students to complete copyrighted homework?

Question

I have a class in a US university that is using a 3rd-party site to charge students a fee to access some of the homework essential to the course. One of the instructors (not mine) holds the copyright to these required Excel spreadsheets, and so every student is being assessed a small fee in order to complete their homework.

With online classes using an ebook publisher's website, paying to be able to do homework is common practice. But that fee is usually assessed and disclosed as part of the textbook/ebook access fee. For this course, we are already paying such a fee for the ebook publisher's website.

Is it normal (or generally acceptable) for an instructor to create a privately-owned website in order to collect "copyright fees" from students because that instructor created original homework files? Is it normal for instructors to require students to pay to use intangible, intellectual property? Or, failing being a regular occurrence, does it at least happen with a high enough frequency to be a noticed, if not often used, practice?

We are explicitly being told the charge is for the use of the copyrighted materials and is a copyright fee, rather than a licensing or maintenance fee. I've never come across this or even heard of it being done before, so I call on the experience of those more grounded in academic norms.

This isn't a matter of purchasing supplies or textbook fees, as those are already assessed by the University or comply with University policy. The nature of the assignment and materials is also not so complex or technically difficult that assignments, or reasonable alternatives, could not be provided using existing University resources.

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While I greatly appreciate the input of the SE community, I know that I also have ways to investigate this at my specific institution and am not using SE as a substitute for doing my own due diligence.

Answer 1

I think that, at best, there is a conflict of interest for an instructor to force students to use a web service that charges money of which s/he gets a cut.

That said, are you sure that that's how it is? For textbooks -- where the same conflict of interest exists -- it is common practice at many universities that if a professor uses her own textbook for a class, that that part of the royalties that the professor receives through his own students' purchases actually goes into a university fund outside the professor's control. The same may in fact be the case at your university -- the professor may simply never have talked about the details in class.

Answer 2

The main point is that it seems that the only reason why the website is set up is to collect the fees, as it would be no problem to distribute them in another way. To me, this is a big difference to the charging for a paper copy scenario, where actually costs occur: If the instructor is not provided free printing facilities, then it would not be unreasonable to actually ask the students to pay the price he has paid to make the copies (in fact, I remember having paid such copy fees). If he does not do this for profit, but only in order not to have to pay the copy out of his own pocket, it's fine. Charging when the instructor does not have any expenses (or could avoid them easily by using free university services), in contrast, would be unethical, I believe,

Answer 3

It is like charging students for handouts, which could include homework assignments, and also like charging students to acquire a mandatory textbook which contains homework assignments. Suppose that the institution had no printing / copying facilities available to the instructor (there are such places). Then you probably would not expect the instructor to provide free instructional materials, any more that you would expect the instructor to provide free sulfur if you were taking a chemistry lab class. So I think the web page matter does cloud the issue, or at least complicate it.

Since this involves a third party website, it is reasonable to assume that the copyright holder has some contractual duty to that company to provide revenue, that is, they probably get a percentage, and the copyright holder isn't allowed to give out free copies to his own students.

If indeed the author created his own company for distributing the materials and thus can set policy, he could in principle give his own students a free ride (and we would then expect a question about whether it is fair for an instructor to give free access to just his own students). So that could mean that it is possible for the author to make materials free to his own students; that does not mean that he is morally obligated to do so.

It seems to me the question boils down to the broader issue of whether an academician should profit from the sale of his intellectual creations to his students, or to any students. That's not the question that you asked, but if you agree that it is proper for a person to profit from the sale of his intellectual creations, then I think you would have to agree that that extends to sale to one's own students, and that the textbook / homework distinction is not material.

Answer 4

Sounds fishy to me...having to pay a "copyright fee" to access required homework/classwork. And, who is getting this fee??

I can understand buying a textbook, paying for copying/handouts (usually in my case, those were just the cost of making the copies), paying for supplies (for extra things or were included in the course's cost, e.g. an extra lab fee). In those cases, you got a tangible product in your hand. And, as was stated, you could buy new or used and via alternate vendors -- especially books.

Shouldn't that "fee" be included in a courses costs, not paid for by students directly? If it's truly "necessary" for class, shouldn't it be part of the course's cost -- not an additional charge?

True, I've been out of school for many years...so the commonality of this I can't answer...but, it sounds rather odd.