Online lectures from (EU) legal perspective - new challenges for copyright and personal data protection during the COVID-19 pandemic
Abstract
n 2020, the world saw a rise of online lectures as schools were closed for the most part of the year due to Covid-19 pandemic measurements in many countries. However, providing online education brings its own set of legal questions and challenges, mostly in the area of copyright and personal data protection.
Therefore, this paper aims to answer questions like Can students record and upload their lectures? To what extent can teachers process students' data during online courses? Can the school force its teachers and students to use webcams during online classes? or Can the lecture be copyrighted work, and what are the legal implications of that? The issues concerning personal data processing are even more pressing, given that many students are minors. In its analysis, the paper focuses on relevant EU and Czech legislation, mainly the General Data Protection Regulation, Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market, Directive 2001/29/EC and the Czech Copyright Act.
The outcome of the paper is a risk analysis of the issues mentioned above. First, the paper discusses the copyright concerns of online lectures, and then it goes into detail regarding the processing of personal data and the use of copyrighted works.