教育の情報化に対応した著作権法の改正とオンライン教育普及に向けた課題

抄録

The Japanese Copyright Law permits the use of a third party’s copyrighted materials for the purpose of school education without the permission of the copyright holder. The Law sets copyright limitations to the copyright holder’s rights so that teachers or students can use copyrighted materials in face-to-face classes and in simultaneous remotely connected classes without the copyright holder’s prior permission, otherwise teachers and students are required to ask for the copyright holder’s permission in other situations. However, in order to address informatization in education, the Law was amended and promulgated on May 25th, 2018 to make copyrighted materials more accessible for teachers and students in digital educational settings. The revised Law has greatly expanded the scope of use of copyrighted materials in digital educational settings. The amendment was enacted on April 28th, 2020 after in response to new need for online education due to the spread of COVID-19. Under these circumstances, the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education and the Japan Society for Educational Technology collaborated to create a safer environment for teachers and students to conduct online teaching and schooling legally, as well as to promote early enactments of the amendments. This paper describes the summary of the amendments to the Copyright Law enacted in response to the digitalization in education, how our societies worked for those enactments, and how these amendments will affect online education. In this paper, we discuss the possibilities and challenges in the spread of online education in schools and universities based on these amendments.