Faculty too must understand that this is the starting point, and they must hold administrators to the proper and high level of copyright protection. The reasons for firmness here are more than simple. By acknowledging the faculty's property interests, the administration acknowledges us as individual actors. They grant that we are the creators and the production staff are assistants, our assistants. This is an understanding that we win as a matter of course.
Academic freedom is at the root of our having real universities.
This idea is well understood and universities routinely have intellectual property statements in their handbooks of rules and procedures. A smooth transition to including distance education and computer creations in properly protected faculty rights is to build on the old statements. That is, one's university protects faculty books and other print-based writings. Thus distance education tapes, syllabi, web pages, etc. are acknowledged to be faculty property. They are our copyrighted property because we write them.