As promised in the last episode, I’ve taken some time to tackle the question of copyright. It can certainly be confusing, but I’m finding it worthwhile to learn more about how to share content responsibly.

When uploading content to Open Assembly, there are three main license types to choose from, with a few options in the underlying tiers. I have outlined them in hopes of making the laws and pertinent court-case decisions a bit more clear and concise.

Public Domain (“No Rights Reserved”)

This is when the creator of the material waives all copyrights. It means that anyone can build upon, enhance, and reuse the work without any restrictions.

A Public Domain (abbreviated as PD or CC0) license should only be applied to your own work unless you have the right to apply CC0 to someone else’s work, as well.

Creative Commons (“Some Rights Reserved”)

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. The CC license allows creators to retain copyright while permitting others to copy, reuse, distribute, and make specific kinds of use of the work. There’s an alphabet soup’s worth of Creative Commons licenses, each defining how much liberty the creator will let others take with their work. All of them however require attribution to the author(s).

CC BY

Others can distribute, remix, tweak, and build on the work—even commercially—as long as the user gives credit to the creator. The gold standard of “open” works.

CC BY-SA

Similar to CC BY but all derivative works and new creations must apply the same license. This means that anyone who changes or reuses the work, must keep the material as CC BY-SA instead of something more open or more restrictive.

CC BY-ND

Allows for commercial and non-commercial redistribution but must remain unchanged and intact as well as credited to the original creator. This does not allow for any derivative works.

CC BY-NC

Others can remix, tweak, and build upon the work, but the original must be credited and new, derivative works must be non-commercial.

CC BY-NC-SA

Similar to CC-BY-NC but all new creations must be under the same licence as the original. This means all others that change or reuse the work, must keep the material CC BY-NC-SA instead of something more open or restrictive.

CC BY-NC-ND

Others can download and distribute the material, but it cannot be changed or used commercially, and the user has to credit the creator.

If you love charts, here’s an easy-to-read illustration of what we’ve covered so far:

distribute and share with others must credit the creator remix, tweak, and build upon to the heart’s content only for non-commercial use must have the same license as the original creation CC BY x x x CC BY-SA x x x x CC BY-ND x x CC BY-NC x x x x CC BY-NC-SA x x x x x CC BY-NC-ND x x x CC0 x x

And, here’s a helpful interactive tool for determining which CC license might best apply to your material.

If you’re looking for content that you can freely and legally use, there is a giant pool of CC-licensed creativity available to you. There are hundreds of millions of works — from songs and videos to scientific and academic material — available to the public for free and legal use under the terms of CC copyright licenses, with more being contributed every day.

Traditional Copyright (“All Rights Reserved”)

This is the default for all works unless noted otherwise. There are many nuances to copyright and intellectual property, but I will try to keep this as basic as possible. In short, if all rights are reserved under a traditional copyright, the creator of the work is the only one who can reproduce the work, make changes (remix, tweak, or build upon) to the work, and use the work commercially. This copyright does expire, typically 70 years after the creator’s death, although this is another area with exceptions and limitations.

Fair Use

Under “all rights reserved” falls the often-misunderstood “fair use” designation. Fair use is is a set of guidelines (rather than legal directives) permitting limited use under certain conditions, based on four factors: purpose, nature, amount, and effect. It can be quite a murky area but is especially important in education. It really can only be said that a certain utilization of the work “favors” fair use. Below are some explanations that are pertinent to education. Check out this checklist here for more detail and examples.

When the purpose of the work is criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, it is usually favorable for fair use. There is also favor for “transformative” uses such as being quoted in a paper or altered art for a mixed media project

The nature of the work is not favorable if it is not yet published or if it is and easily available material in the educational market.

The amount used can be difficult to determine, but it is not fair use if it is capturing the “heart” of the work, or too large of a portion of the work. This is qualitative as well as quantitative and really is a judgment call.

The effect concerns how the use will affect the market of the copyright. If it will cause market changes or loss in value for the original work, it is not favorable under Fair Use.

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Hopefully this information will help you as much as it’s helped me understand which license to use when uploading material. At the moment, Open Assembly has the default copyright set to CC BY as this is the “gold standard” of open licenses, especially in education, where it is enabling access to free textbooks and other resources for over a million students in the US alone.

If CC BY does not apply to your uploaded content, be sure to change it. Remember that this is a VERY BASIC guide and if you have ANY doubts about copyright licenses, err on the safe side and assume that all rights are reserved and carefully follow Fair Use–or look deeper into it.

Also, not to be forgotten, especially given the topic of the post, all my information was gathered from Columbia University’s Copyright Advisory Board, the Creative Commons website, and the U.S. government’s copyright site.

If you want to help the cause of Creative Commons for students and teachers in your circles, pass this info on. Let your teachers know about CC-based open textbook publishing, a growing and important trend improving access to education. You might even benefit one day with a much smaller textbook bill!