Copyright, Public Domain & Creative Commons for Educators
1. Copyright public domain and
creative commons for
educators
Copyright, Public
Domain & Creative
Commons for educators
Bite sized learning from the CTL at Athens Technical College – Robin Fay, Portal Manager, CTL
2. What you need to know about licensing
Licensing types – creative commons, public
domain, copyright
Tools to determine copyright/public domain
Finding content you can use
Note: Information collecting regarding copyright law is accurate (in as much as can be
determined from research), but should not be taken as legal advice.
Agenda
3. Anyone can create and distribute
content on the internet. Most
likely you are already doing this –
if you post to Facebook, blog,
share links on a public webpage
or syllabus, have a website…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/amit-agarwal/14338944877
Licensing 101
4. 1. To ensure that you get proper credit of your
work * (any intellectual property agreements
you sign as part of a publishing contract or
employment will take precedent)
2. To encourage sharing of your content and
contribute to scholarly activities in your area
of expertise.
3. It makes your job easier in that you can find
educational content more readily. (and it can
save students money!)
4. Violating copyright is illegal.
"Copy-roger" by Jose - Indymedia Mexico. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Copy-roger.png#/media/File:Copy-roger.png
Why should you care
5. Copyright: A legal statement
about ownership and rights
Rights: Whether you can use an
item, to what extent, and how
Creative Commons: Developed to
make copyright easier to
understand and more transparent
for content creators
Quick Terminology
6. Public Domain: Content
for which copyright does
not apply or has expired
Alices’ adventures in
wonderland is public
domain; Micky Mouse is
not yet…
Source: Project Guttenberg (Public Domain)
Quick terminology: Public Domain
7. Public domain is unrestricted access – essentially either
the copyright expired, is not copyrightable (ideas,
facts, etc.), is assigned public domain by its creator.
these are generally public domain:
• all works published in the U.S. before 1923
• all works published with a copyright notice from
1923 through 1963 without copyright renewal
• all works published without a copyright notice from
1923 through 1977
• all works published without a copyright notice from
1978 through March 1, 1989, and without
subsequent registration within 5 years
• the default term is life of the author plus 70 years
PUBLIC DOMAIN - not copyright
9. Fair Use: An exception to the
copyright laws to allow
copyrighted materials to be used
for educational purposes – it is not
all inclusive and has restrictions
Quick terminology: Fair Use
10. In US copyright law, a doctrine that brief excerpts of
copyright material may, under certain circumstances,
be quoted verbatim for purposes such as criticism,
news reporting, teaching, and research, without
the need for permission from or payment to the
copyright holder.Examples of fair use include commentary, search
engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research,
teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides
for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of
copyrighted material in another author's work under a
four-factor balancing act (wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use)
FAIR USE – a copyright exemption
11. We used to share photos via an physical
book of photographic prints. Because we
controlled access and it remained in our
private areas (e.g., our houses), most of
us didn’t think about copyright and the
government did not know all of the things
we created (unless we published it or
donated our photo album to a library, at
which point they would determine the
rights.
How content has changed
12. Now, you would likely share your photos
through the web
• Upload and share through social media
(Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, etc.)
• Upload to your own website
• Send via email or text/apps (Snapchat,
Instagram private)
We are all content creators
13. The act of uploading or posting to any
website is publishing it. Anything
published to the web, is considered to
be copyrighted.
So, when you upload a new photo, you are
publishing it and in fact, copyrighting it. If
you do not assign rights to it, then
copyright is all rights reserved by YOU,
e.g., no one else can use it without your
explicit permission*
And publishers…
14. HOWEVER, 3rd party sites (Flickr,
Facebook, etc.) and apps (Instagram,
Snapchat, etc.) have TOS (Terms of
Services) that apply to your content.
Typically, you see the TOS when you first
sign up for a service.
Do they own it or do you own it? It
depends upon the TOS.
What about social media?
15. • Sharing a link to an image, article,
video, etc. usually retains the chain of
ownership and rights (provenance),
ensuring that copyright is not violated.
• However, downloading the item and
then re-sharing it may or may not be
legal (depends upon the rights or if
using under Fair Use how much and how
long you will use it)
What about content that does not
belong to you?
16. • As you can see from the previous
examples, because of the web, copyright
can get complicated very quickly.
• Digital Rights Management (DRM) or
Digital Assessment Management(DAM)
are tools to enforce copyright with digital
materials. An example of DRM in use is
the limitation of only loading a music
mp3 on a certain number of devices.
This is controlled by encoded data
(actually rights metadata).
Managing rights with digital materials
17. • Content that is licensed for use in some
capacity is consider to be open. Open
Educational Resources (OER) are
educational materials (quizzes,
simulations, lesson plans, etc.) that can
be reused. Software that can be shared
or used by others is Opensource.
A quick word about Open..
18. • Not all software, devices, and content
has DRM or DAM.
• Not all content on the web has an
explicit copyright statement (or even
usage statement).
• Creative commons simplifies this
process.
This is why creative commons is so
useful..
19. Main options are
• Derivatives (ND) - whether a user can
make deriatives (use your content to
make new content, remix your content)
• ShareAlike (SA) - can it be shared
following the original license
• NonCommercial (NC) - not for
commercial uses
• So what would CC By-NC-ND be?
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Creative commons licenses
20. • Digital copyright slider -
http://librarycopyright.net/resources/digitalslider/ (determines if
something has a copyright or is public domain)
• Creative Commons license creator
https://creativecommons.org/choose/
• Creative Commons license creator for Microsoft products
http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=13303
• Can this material be digitized?
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/files/2007/12/copyright
-review-flow-chart-v3x.pdf
• Fair Use Evaluator - http://librarycopyright.net/resources/fairuse/
• Fair use checklist
https://copyright.columbia.edu/content/dam/copyright/Precedent
%20Docs/fairusechecklist.pdf
Copyright tools
21. CC Search screen
Searching by rights at the CC site
Searching by rights and multiple sites via
the CC search engine
23. • Bing does too – search first and then refine
Searching by rights in Bing
24. Google search and refine
• Search and refine by license in Google (or
use advanced search)
25. • Advanced search (all materials can limit by file type):
https://www.google.com/advanced_search
•
Searching by rights – Google
advanced
26. • Advanced image search – can search by color, type, size, and
rights etc. https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
• Tip: search transparent and wide for best fit for powerpoint
(transparent = no background)
Searching by rights – advanced image
search
27. Images & Film
• Europeana http://www.europeana.eu/portal/
• Everystockphoto http://www.everystockphoto.com/
• Flickr by rights https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
• Library of Congress’s list of Public Domain film resources http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/pubdomain.html
• NASA free images http://www.nasa.gov/connect/artspace/participate/royalty_free_resources.html
• New York Times Public Domain Archives
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_Domain_Images_from_the_New_York_Times
• PicFindr http://www.picfindr.com/ (aggregates searching)
• Pics4Learning http://www.pics4learning.com/ (free images for education)
• Pixabay https://pixabay.com/
• Wikipedia Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources
• Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ; New York Times public domain
photographs http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_Domain_Images_from_the_New_Yo
rk_Times
• Smithsonian Public Domain photographs (on Flickr) https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian
• Search engines by rights and image search (Bing, Google, etc.)
See CTL’s resource handout http://goo.gl/KZ7Bex
OER resources, free books,
images and more