Founder
July 15, 2026
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Authorship, institutional use rights, personal data and evidentiary issues in respect of course notes, video lectures and examination materials uploaded to an LMS
The course may have ended; the recording remains on the platform. The employment or appointment relationship may have terminated; yet the instructor’s voice, image and delivery style remain accessible. The legal fracture that distinguishes distance-learning content from face-to-face teaching begins precisely at this point.
A faculty member produces digital course notes, video lectures and examination materials within a joint or compulsory course at the higher-education institution where they serve. After the employment or appointment relationship ends, it is alleged that those materials continue to be used on the institution’s distance-learning platform. The question is no longer merely “who owns the content?” The instructor may be the author; the institution may, depending on the nature of the concrete relationship, assert a right to exploit the economic rights; and yet personal-data, moral-rights and evidentiary issues arise separately.
This article examines, through a typical dispute scenario that may be encountered in practice, how digital course content uploaded to an LMS should be read under the FSEK, the KVKK and the law of digital evidence — for UZEM administrators, legal departments, academics and educational institutions.
In the distance-learning context, the real issue is not confined to the question “what is a work?” Learning management systems (LMS) are digital infrastructures that sustain the continuity of the institution’s educational activity, manage student access and often remain active for years. Every item of material uploaded to that infrastructure may simultaneously engage intellectual-property, personal-data, contract-law and evidentiary regimes.
Institutions should not treat every file uploaded to the LMS as “institutional content”; they should design from the outset who produced it, under which assignment, under which rights, for how long, and with which technical records it is used.
Course notes, presentations, PDF materials, examination questions, video recordings and supplementary resources uploaded to the platform by an academic or instructor do not all share the same legal status. Each engages a different protective regime:
Course notes / PDF / slides: May qualify as works of science and literature (FSEK Art. 2); authorship together with economic and moral rights come into play.
Examination questions: Where original expression exists, they may constitute works of science and literature; authorship is protected.
Video lecture recordings: Depending on the concrete case, they may be cinematographic works and/or the subject of neighbouring rights; the rights of the author, the performing artist and the film producer must be assessed together.
The instructor’s voice and image: Are subject to personal-data and personality-rights protection; the KVKK intersects with moral rights.
Platform access logs: Are personal data / technical logs; they matter both under the KVKK and for evidentiary purposes.
While course notes may be assessed as “works of science and literature,” a video lecture opens a broader debate along the axes of voice, image, performance and personality rights. That distinction explains why one-line defences of the form “the content is ours” or “the content is mine” fall short in disputes.
Under Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works (FSEK), a work is defined as “any product of intellectual and artistic endeavour that bears the characteristics of its author and that is classified as a work of science and literature, music, fine arts or cinema.” The first requirement for an intellectual product to count as a work is that it bears the author’s characteristics; a high level of creativity is not required.
Not every set of course notes automatically constitutes a work. However, where the instructor’s original ordering, manner of exposition, topic selection, systematisation, exemplification and style of expression are present, the product may become an intellectual creation “bearing the characteristics of its author.”
Historical, legal, mathematical or medical knowledge is nobody’s monopoly; yet the manner in which that knowledge is selected, ordered, explained and presented may be the subject of copyright protection.
The Court of Cassation (Yargıtay), 11th Civil Chamber, has accepted that slides prepared for postgraduate courses constitute works of science and literature within the meaning of FSEK Art. 2, and that publication on the web may infringe the right of communication to the public. The Ankara Regional Court of Appeal, 20th Civil Chamber, has held that audiovisual lecture recordings for history and civics courses qualify as works of science and literature bearing the author’s characteristics, and that compensation may be claimed where moral and economic rights are infringed.
Course notes, materials and examination questions prepared within a particular ordering, system and the instructor’s own presentational style may therefore qualify as works of science and literature within the meaning of FSEK Arts. 1/B-a and 2. That distinction between mere transmission of information and original exposition requires institutions to question, as a matter of law, the assumption of “standard course content.”
A video lecture recording is not merely the reading of a text. The instructor’s voice, image, rhythm of delivery and gestures; the presentation screen, course materials and platform recording coexist. For that reason, a video lecture may, under the FSEK, be the subject of a work or of neighbouring rights; and, because of the instructor’s image and voice, it also brings personal-data and personality-rights debate with it.
Whether video lecture recordings can be characterised as cinematographic works under FSEK Art. 5 must be assessed separately in light of how the recording was prepared, the presence of audiovisual editorial elements and the degree of creative contribution. That said, a lecture delivered by the instructor through voice and image at least engages neighbouring rights, personal data and personality rights.
Within this framework, three layers must be read separately:
Cinematographic work (FSEK Art. 5): Recordings in which the instructor performs their course notes in moving images through their own style and manner of delivery may, depending on the nature of the concrete case, constitute cinematographic works.
Performing artist’s rights (FSEK Art. 80): The instructor may, within the performance of their own course notes, hold neighbouring rights as a performing artist.
Film producer (FSEK Art. 80): Where the institution is regarded as having contributed capital and organisation to the filming of the video, the institution may hold neighbouring rights as “film producer.” That status does not extinguish the instructor’s moral rights, which are tightly bound to the person.
Institutions’ approach of “we filmed the lecture video, so it is now ours” overlooks this layered structure.
The central thesis of this article crystallises in the following distinction:
Authorship and the right to exploit economic rights are not the same thing.
The FSEK adopts the principle of creation. The author of a work is the person who creates it (FSEK Arts. 1/B-b, 8). Under the presumptions of authorship (FSEK Arts. 11, 12), the person whose name appears on the work or who is recognised as such is deemed the author. However, where the work was created by the instructor while performing their duties under an employment or appointment relationship, the employing or appointing institution also holds certain rights over the work that derive from the FSEK. That distinction becomes concrete in the following questions:
Who created the work? The instructor / academic.
Who is the author? As a rule, the natural person who produced it.
Who may exploit the economic rights? The institution, depending on the nature of the work and the contract.
Do moral rights pass entirely to the institution? No; rights tightly bound to the person must be assessed separately.
May the institution use the content indefinitely? That depends on the contract, the nature of the work, the purpose and the scope of use.
The statute refuses to make employing or appointing institutions authors by operation of law; it accepts only that rights of use may be conferred. Authorship of the created work remains with the instructor, while the institution may benefit from the economic rights in the work. Moral rights — the power to disclose the work to the public, the right to have one’s name indicated, and the power to prohibit alteration of the work — are tightly bound to the person; that distinction is decisive in uses that continue after the employment or appointment relationship has ended.
Under FSEK Art. 18/2, “unless the special contract between them or the nature of the work indicates otherwise, the rights in works created by civil servants, employees and workers while performing their duties shall be exploited by those who employ or appoint them.”
For the employing or appointing institution to exploit the economic rights, the work must have been “created while performing duties.” Lecture videos, course notes, materials and examination questions prepared by a faculty member within the scope of their assignment may be regarded as produced while performing duties. In that case, under FSEK Art. 18/2, the right to exploit the economic rights may be exercised by the institution according to the nature of the concrete relationship. In the practice of the Court of Cassation, the right to exploit the economic rights in works created within an employment or appointment relationship is treated as the exercise of a statutory power; unless there is a contrary contract between the institution and the instructor, the employing or appointing party may assert that right without the need for a written assignment agreement complying with FSEK Art. 52.
That power is not unlimited. The phrase “unless the special contract between them or the nature of the work indicates otherwise” also shows that the parties may agree otherwise. Where the work was not created while performing duties — for example, in materials prepared outside the assignment — the institution has no right or authority.
General wording in staff confidentiality agreements such as “all materials are the property of the institution” may, standing alone, be an insufficient legal basis against the FSEK’s principle of creation and the presumptions of authorship. A confidentiality obligation and an assignment of intellectual property are different legal institutions.
The instructor leaves the institution; yet the lecture videos, notes and examination materials they previously produced continue to be made available to students on the institution’s distance-learning platform. The instructor demands that use cease; the institution contends that the content was produced within the scope of the assignment and is used for educational activity.
A simple “yes/no” answer is not possible. Whether the institution may continue to use the content after the employment or appointment relationship has ended depends on criteria such as whether the content was produced within the scope of the assignment; whether duration, scope and purpose were regulated in the contract; whether use is limited to internal institutional education or extends to external/commercial access; and whether the instructor’s name, voice and image continue to be used.
The institution may have a right to exploit economic rights; but that right must not be read as an unlimited, off-purpose, indefinite freedom that overrides personality rights.
Under FSEK Art. 18/2, the institution may exploit the economic rights in works produced while the employment or appointment relationship was ongoing. Use after the relationship has ended is a separate debate as to duration of use, scope, the instructor’s moral rights and the processing of personal data. Where materials remain accessible on the platform for more than one academic term after the instructor’s departure, where use is alleged to have continued despite notices, and where the institution’s defence that “it is no longer being used” is considered together, an evidentiary problem also comes into play.
Copyright debates often stall on the question “who owns the content?” Yet in UZEM practice there is a question at least as important: If a former instructor’s content continues to be used in a new term, who is responsible for the currency and academic accuracy of that course?
The instructor may have left the institution, while the content is still being offered to the student in their voice, image and delivery style. If the content is outdated, erroneous, if legislation or academic literature has changed, or if the institution presents the material as a current course, the allocation of responsibility becomes unclear. The student assumes that the course accessed on the platform is “the official course of the moment”; yet in the background may sit material produced years earlier by a departed instructor.
In that situation, three dimensions must be considered together:
Academic responsibility: Who oversees the currency and accuracy of the course and the conformity of the information presented to students with institutional standards? If the institution uses former content as if it were a new-term course, an obligation to update or revise that content may arise.
Moral rights and reputation: Outdated content presented under the instructor’s name, voice and image may also affect the instructor’s academic reputation. The right to have one’s name indicated (FSEK Art. 15) is, in this context, not merely a copyright issue but one of academic visibility.
Institutional risk: Presenting unupdated content to students may give rise not only to copyright disputes, but also to risks of educational quality, accreditation and institutional reputation.
For that reason, digital content rights-management protocols should add, alongside “who owns the content?”, the questions “how long has the content been active, who updates it, and is the departed instructor’s material still the official course?”
A defence frequently relied on is found in FSEK Art. 33 (Freedom of Performance) and Art. 34 (Anthologies and Compilations for Education and Instruction). The Court of Cassation, 11th Civil Chamber, has emphasised that the educational exception under FSEK Arts. 33 and 34 must be assessed. That exception does not, however, automatically legitimise every form of digital use.
Educational purpose matters in copyright law; but the phrase “educational purpose” is not an unlimited safe harbour for digital content use.
The limits of the education-and-instruction exception include the following: that the exception is conceived for published works; that the “non-profit” condition must be separately debated where foundation universities offer education against a per-term fee; that the names of the author and the work must be disclosed; that the freedom of performance under FSEK Art. 33 must not be confused with the right of communication to the public under FSEK Art. 25; and that limited performance during a class must not be treated as carrying the same legal weight as keeping content accessible on an LMS for years.
The defence “we are using it for education” does not, standing alone, legitimise long-term, repeated use on a digital platform that continues after the employment or appointment relationship has ended.
Even if it is accepted that the institution holds a right of use for copyright purposes, the instructor’s name, image, voice, academic title, user profile on the platform and lecture recording must still be assessed separately as personal data and under personality rights.
An institution that holds a copyright-based right of use must still establish a separate lawful basis for personal data and personality rights. FSEK Art. 18/2 cannot be read as an automatic and unlimited data-processing permission under the KVKK.
Under Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK), the instructor’s voice and image are personal data. Recording a lecture during the employment or appointment relationship may, within certain limits, be processed under KVKK Art. 5/2-(c) where it is directly related to the establishment or performance of a contract. Continued use of the same recordings after the legal relationship between the institution and the instructor has ended must be assessed separately as to the original purpose of processing, the duration of use, the scope of access and the conditions of data processing. At that stage, the institution must put forward a valid, specific and proportionate legal basis within the framework of KVKK Art. 5.
In decisions of the Personal Data Protection Board (KVKK Kurulu), it has been stressed that the power imbalance between the institution and the instructor gives rise to serious doubt as to explicit consent. General wording in staff confidentiality agreements cannot be read as an automatic and indefinite data-processing permission under KVKK Art. 5. The instructor’s YÖKSİS record, academic title and visibility on the institutional staff roll are likewise subject to separate data-processing activities.
Whether the content was in fact used, when it was deleted, who accessed it and in which course context it was opened become questions of digital evidence. Typical evidentiary problems include the following: a log list from the platform provider may, standing alone, be unsuitable to establish whether a particular instructor’s materials were published; the institution may report that it deleted the content, yet — for want of an archiving system — past-use records cannot be reached; date-and-time information on screenshots depends on the user’s system clock; and witness statements may be inconsistent with technical records.
Log records generally contain login, date, time and activity-context information; yet they do not always give a clear answer to “which instructor’s which material was actively accessible in which term.” Screenshots may offer preliminary proof of viewing on the platform at a given moment; continuity and independent corroboration remain separate issues.
Institutions must regularly retain, in their LMS systems, upload date, access date, view count, user role, course code, content owner, deletion date, archive record and authority changes; and they must expressly regulate, in contracts with platform providers, log-retention periods and the procedures for obtaining records in the event of a dispute. Otherwise, an evidentiary problem arises for both the institution and the content producer.
The legal analysis requires institutions to develop, at an operational level, a protocol based on the following five principles:
1. Content inventory: For every item of digital course content, a record of owner, production date, scope of assignment and right of use should be kept; course notes, video, presentations, examination questions and platform recordings should be categorised separately.
2. Contractual clarity: Instructor contracts should expressly regulate material types, duration of use, scope, platform and purpose; and should determine the fate of the content (deletion, archiving, transfer, licensing) when the employment or appointment relationship ends.
3. Personal-data and image/voice management: Separate privacy notices should be established for the instructor’s name, image and voice; and a time limit or separate legal basis should be provided for data processing after the relationship ends.
4. LMS log and archive policy: Procedures for content deletion, archiving and digital-evidence retention should be defined; log-retention obligations with third-party platform providers should be regulated in contracts.
5. Content wind-down procedure when the employment or appointment relationship ends: Materials belonging to departed instructors should be periodically scanned; the currency, academic responsibility and legal compliance of content that remains accessible should be reviewed; and student-facing, internal institutional and external uses should be placed in separate categories.
The legal fate of a course uploaded to an LMS is determined not by the question “who delivered it?”, but by who produced it, under which assignment, which rights were assigned or exploited, for what purpose and for how long the content remained accessible, how that use is proved, and under whose responsibility former content is kept current in a new term.
In course materials that qualify as works, the author is, as a rule, the producing instructor; under FSEK Art. 18/2, the right to exploit economic rights in content produced within the scope of the assignment may be asserted by the institution. That right does not, however, extinguish personal-data protection, moral rights, the limits of the educational exception, digital-evidence requirements or the dimension of academic responsibility.
Sustainable digital education is possible not only through pedagogical quality, but through a content rights-management protocol that designs from the outset the distinction among ownership – right of use – personal data – evidence.
In distance learning, course content is no longer confined to the moment it is delivered; from the moment it is recorded, it enters a legal life cycle. For institutions that cannot manage that life cycle, the problem most often arises not at the moment the content is produced, but while the content continues to live on the platform.
Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works (FSEK), Arts. 1/B, 2, 5, 8, 11-12, 14-17, 18/2, 25, 33-34, 52, 80
Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK), Arts. 4-5
Personal Data Protection Board (Kişisel Verileri Koruma Kurulu), T. 18.01.2022, K. 2022/36
Court of Cassation (Yargıtay), 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2016/14730, K. 2018/6413, T. 17.10.2018
Court of Cassation (Yargıtay), 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2019/136, K. 2020/3265, T. 29.06.2020
Court of Cassation (Yargıtay), 11th Civil Chamber, E. 2004/13182, T. 09.11.2005
Ankara Regional Court of Appeal (Ankara BAM), 20th Civil Chamber, E. 2019/1477, K. 2021/695
This article has been prepared through a typical dispute scenario that may be encountered in practice; it does not constitute legal opinion or advice in respect of any particular case, file or party.
