The development of the internet has presented special challenges for teaching and learning, especially from the viewpoint of the rights and expectations of the instructor to maintain an environment appropriate to fulfill educational objectives. Restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic have amplified these concerns as virtual teaching methods almost literally overnight had to be adopted very widely among instructors. Among the ironies have been several instances where recorded (fragments of) lectures delivered virtually were publicized on social networking sites for reasons of exposing some perceived form of objectionable content. In this paper, I focus on the policy implications of lectures being transmitted on the internet subject to their recording and distribution in ways not authorized by the instructor, especially from the viewpoint of rights formally granted in the US legal system. Various legal avenues are available to protect lectures, specifically in relation to copyright law, academic freedom, and contractual breach of trust. Although pedagogical goals and means must always remain primary in our teaching, these legal measures can be relied upon when other safeguards fail in order to maintain and promote educational integrity.

互联网的发展对教学和学习提出了特殊的挑战，特别是从教师的权利和期望的角度来看，以维持适合实现教育目标的环境。COVID-19 大流行期间施加的限制加剧了这些担忧，因为虚拟教学方法几乎在一夜之间就必须在教师中得到非常广泛的采用。具有讽刺意味的是，在社交网站上公开了虚拟授课的录制（片段）讲座，原因是暴露了一些感知形式的令人反感的内容。在本文中，我将重点关注在互联网上传播的讲座的政策含义，这些讲座以未经教师授权的方式进行录制和分发，特别是从美国法律体系中正式授予的权利的角度来看。有多种法律途径可以保护讲座，特别是在版权法、学术自由和合同违约方面。尽管教学目标和手段在我们的教学中必须始终保持首要地位，但当其他保障措施失败时，可以依靠这些法律措施来维持和促进教育诚信。