The creation of audiovisual material for massive open online courses (MOOCs): unresolved legal questions on intellectual property

Teaching via online platforms has provided the opportunity for universities to offer courses that overcome all physical obstacles, the so-called massive open online courses or MOOCs. This change from bricks-and-mortar to virtual courses has occurred at a great rate in recent years thanks to the information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the global nature by the Internet. The audiovisual materials created have led to growing doubts over the protection of rights and pose a series of questions related to intellectual property not foreseen in the current legislation. This paper analyses intellectual property on the audiovisual material used in the MOOCs. We use the Technical University of Valencia (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia) as a case study and aim to describe the different ways of assigning rights, to identify potential problems (e.g., plagiarism and the right to quote) and conflicts, and to propose solutions. We find there is a lack of rules setting down what may and may not be done with regard to audiovisual materials and their use on the Internet that requires reforming the intellectual property legislation to provide legal coverage to the works protected, their use and the restrictions on them in this area.