COPYRIGHT, OPEN LICENSING &
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES
Meredith Jacob
Public Lead – Creative Commons United States
American University Washington College of Law
Except where noted, all slides licensed CC-BY
4.0 by Creative Commons United States

• What are Open Educational Resources (OER)
• How are they the same as traditional teaching and
learning materials?
• What makes them different?
• Copyright basics
• How OER work
• Advantages
• Where else are they being used and places to find
OER
• FAQ
WHAT WE’LL COVER

Open Educational Resources (OER) are
educational materials that are released
under an open copyright license, rather than
under traditional all rights reserved
copyright.
• Digital distribution and authorship
• Public access and cost savings
• Ability to improve, remix, and translate
OER

Just like traditional teaching materials, OER
can be:
• Textbooks
• Articles
• Slides
• Images
• Videos
• Simulations
SIMILARITIES

Unlike traditional educational materials,
OER have been released under an open
copyright license that allows users to:
• Update and remix
• Translate
• Share new versions
• Post online
DIFFERENCES

Copyright law grants to the author (or copyright
owner) the exclusive right to: reproduce, make
derivatives of, sell, distribute to the public,
perform or display publicly, the copyrighted
work, subject to fair use and other limitations
and exceptions to copyright law.
Copyright owners may assign all the rights in
their copyright, or give limited licenses that
allow others to make specific use of their
works.
WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?

Copyright law applies to intellectual property
that are “original works of authorship.” Common
types of works protected by copyright include
literary, artistic, and musical works. Copyright is
automatic, so it applies as soon as the work
has been created.
Copyright protection in the United States lasts
for the life of the author plus 70 years or 95
years for an institutional author. After this time
period has expired, works fall into the public
domain and are free from copyright restrictions.
WHAT DOES COPYRIGHT
PROTECT?

There are a number of exceptions and
limitations to copyright.
Functional concepts, names, and logos are
typically covered by patent or trademark law,
if protected at all, rather than copyright.
Copyright protects the specific expression of
a work - the words - but not the underlying
idea.
ARE THERE LIMITS TO WHAT
COPYRIGHT PROTECTS?

Fair use a allows the use of a copyrighted work
without permission from the copyright holder
under specific circumstances.
News reporting, teaching, and parody are all
examples of uses that could qualify as fair use.
Fair use is evaluated on a case-by-case basis,
and considers the purpose of the use, how
much of the original work is used, and how it
impacts the market for the original work.
WHAT ABOUT FAIR USE?

• Works within the copyright system
• Author still holds copyright to the work
• Traditional licenses are one to one
(negotiated)
• Open licenses like the Creative Commons
licenses are one to the public/one to many
WHAT IS AN OPEN LICENSE?

Advantages
• Takes advantage digital distribution and
authorship
• Ability to improve, remix, and translate
• Makes informal reuse formally permissible
(and possible on the open internet)
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF
AN OPEN LICENSE?

• Clearly communicates to the public that
the resource is free to reuse
• Grants the public a license to access,
reproduce, publicly perform, publicly
display, adapt, distribute, and otherwise
use for any purposes
• provided that the licensee gives attribution
to the designated authors of the
intellectual property.
WHAT DOES A CREATIVE
COMMONS LICENSE DO?

WHY AN OPEN LICENSE?

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
THE CC LICENSE MARK AND LINK

THE HUMAN READABLE VERSION

THE LEGAL TEXT

OPEN TEXTBOOK LIBRARY

• 109 Districts
• 20 states
#GO OPEN- K12

MARKING YOUR WORK
© 2013 by CCSSO. Operational Best
Practices for Statewide Large-Scale Assessment Programs
2013 Edition is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 it is available at
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Operational_
Best_Practices_for_Statewide_Large-
Scale_Assessment_Programs.html

Open Educational Resources and Creative
Commons Licenses by Meredith Jacob,
slideshare.net/Meredith Jacob under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(CC BY)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ATTRIBUTION EXAMPLE

• Customization
– Sequencing
– Examples
– Combination
ADVANTAGES FOR
TEACHING

• Cost
– Day 1 access to materials
• Collaboration
– Openly share updates/remixes
ADVANTAGES FOR
TEACHING

• What rights does the author retain?
• Can content still be commercialized?
• What about building new materials on
openly licensed content?
• What about materials that contain or builds
on existing copyrighted content?
– Licensed photos or passages
– Combination with proprietary software
QUESTIONS ABOUT
IMPLEMENTATION - COPYRIGHT

• Using Existing OER
– Identify CC license
– Materials in the Public Domain
• Federal Authorship
• Pre-1923
• Creating OER equivalents for proprietary
materials
– Ideas are not protected by copyright
– Short excerpts for illustration, criticism or review
under fair use
HOW TO FIND OER

When you reuse materials in combination,
you have to decide if you are creating an
adaptation.
REUSING AND REMIXING
OER

When you reuse materials in combination,
you have to decide if you are creating an
adaptation.
Things that are generally not an adaptation:
- A compilation or playlist of content and
excerpts from content
- Setting unedited images for illustration
along side narrative text
REUSING AND REMIXING
OER

When you reuse materials in combination,
you have to decide if you are creating an
adaptation.
Things that are an adaptation
- A remix that contains segments of content
combined into a new work
- Edited and/or combined images
REUSING AND REMIXING
OER

“Explaining ND Licenses with Steampunk Space Rhinos” by Meredith Jacob under a CC BY 4.0 License. Original
mages used in clockwise order from upper right are (1) “Cable Green” by David Kidler from Flickr under a CC By
2.0 License (2)”Hubble Views ‘Third Kind’ of Galaxy” by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Flickr under a CC
By 2.0 License (3) “View of the Americas on 12.13.14” by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Flickr under a
CC By 2.0 License (4)”A unicorn with curves?” by Mark Gunn from Flickr under a CC By 2.0 License ”Look to the
Stars” by davidd from Flickr under a CC By 2.0 License. Original images were re-sized, color-altered and
stamped with the CC logo to create this new work.
THIS IS DEFINITELY AN
ADAPTATION

Connect with others on your campus:
- In your academic department
- In the center for teaching and learning
- At the library
NEXT STEPS FOR OER

What are “first steps” on OER adoption:
- Faculty grants for adoption
- Support from CRTL staff or librarians
- Is your institution a member of OTN?
- Is your institution a member of any other
consortia with a OER or library focus?
(e.g. Greater Western Library Alliance)
- Adopt an Open =Stax book
NEXT STEPS FOR OER

• Join the CC Open Education
Platform: Stay connected to global
actions in open education resources,
practice, and policy.
• Join Creative Commons USA (Also on CC
Slack)
NEXT STEPS FOR OER

• creativecommonsusa.org
• creativecommons.org
• mjacob@wcl.american.edu
• slideshare.net/MeredithJacob
OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN MORE