Net 204: Copyright, the Creative Commons & Licensing Your Work

Internet Communities & Social Networks 204

Copyright, the Creative Commons & Licensing Your Work

Dr Tama Leavert.leaver@curtin.edu.au

www.tamaleaver.net

Choosing how to license your work

Options:

1. Full Copyright2. A ‘some rights reserved’ license

eg a Creative Commons license.3. The Public Domain

[1] Full Copyright

• Is automatic – you have it by default upon creation of a work.

• Lasts a long time – differs by medium, but often your lifetime + 70 years.

• Operates slightly differently in different countries – usually license according to country you create in.

• Matters because any reproducing, borrowing, remixing, quoting your work must have your permission unless it’s Fair Dealing …

Fair Dealing (similar but not the same as US Fair Use)

• Research and Study;• Criticism and Review; • News Reporting;• Reproduction for Purposes of Judicial

Proceedings or Legal Professional Advice;• Parody and Satire (with some exceptions).

(eg: 10% or one chapter of a book for research)

Use Outside of Education

• Students often rely on fair dealing for research and study when reproducing musical works and sound recordings on the soundtrack for their film. This exception will not apply where the work is taken out of the classroom or study context and presented to the general public.

http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/guidelines/2_5.html

What is copyright and what effects me (and anything I create)?

• Copyright is automatic and lasts a long time!• Fair dealing - in educational contexts, review purposes,

legal advice. • Rely on a limited fair dealing in relation to ‘reporting

the news’.• Fair dealing does not extend outside of the education

context - ie don’t rely on it! (If it’s online don’t presume it’s protected by fair dealing!)

• All material used other than material you create must have clear citation/credits.

What can I use online?

• Anything you have explicit permission from the copyright holder(s) to use.

• Anything definitely in the public domain. (Don’t presume no license = public domain!)

• Anything explicitly licensed allowing re-use (ie open-content licenses, including ‘copyleft’ and Creative Commons licensing).

[2] What are the Creative Commons?

• An attempt to build a reasonable layer of licenses which allow creators to specify which rights they wish to retain, and which rights they are happy to give away.

• Means new creators can re-use work without having go through the laborious task of contacting creators to get permission every time.

Some rights reserved?

• The Creative Commons are a series of licenses which allow content creators to specify which rights they wish other users to have.

• CC is the middle ground in the spectrum from All Rights Reserved to the Public Domain.

• The Creative Commons licenses result in ‘Some Rights Reserved’ ...

Driven by a philosophy of sharing!

Range of CC Licenses

Attribution

Non-commercial

No derivatives

Share-alike

Creative Commons License Elements

4 licence elements: Attribution – attribute the author

Noncommercial – no commercial use

No Derivative Works – no remixing

ShareAlike – remix only if you let others remix (your work must have the same license)

How to choose your license ...

• http://creativecommons.org/choose/

[3] The Public Domain

• Gives your work away complete, irreversibly, forever. You maintain no rights to that work at all.

So, make your choice ...

• And place text at the end of your conference paper, indicating the terms under which you’re placing your work online.

• I recommend Creative Commons Attribution, because you want your ideas to share easily, but the choice is yours ...