Tag: Overview

Creative Commons licences

10 January 2022 / Erica Levi

Find here at a glance information on the Creative Commons:

1. What are the Creative Commons licences?
2. Fair dealing and the reuse of Creative Commons licensed works
3. What are the elements of the Creative Commons?
4. What are the six Creative Commons licences?
5. How do the Creative Commons licences work technically?
6. How do you reference and acknowledge Creative Commons licensed works?
7. How do I pick a Creative Commons licence for my work?
8. Considerations on remixed/adapted and derivative works for Creative Commons licensed material
9. Creative Commons’ adapters and remixers licence chart
10. How can I use works on Wikimedia and Wikipedia?

What are Open Educational Resources?

13 December 2021 / Erica Levi

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are shared at no cost with legal permissions for the public to freely use, share, and build upon the content (either in the public domain or under a CC licence permitting derivative works, such as CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, or CC BY-NC-SA.

Educational resources are open when providing the public with permission to engage in the 5R activities:

Retain – permission to make, own and control copies of the content (download, duplicate, store and manage)
Reuse – permission to use the content in many ways (class, study group, website and video)
Revise – permission to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (translate into another language)
Remix – permission to combine content with other material to create something new (mashup)
Redistribute – permission to share the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Fair dealing and the reuse of Creative Commons licensed works

10 December 2021 / Erica Levi

Unless the person using the work received separate permission or relied on fair dealing or other exceptions to copyright, they are potentially liable for copyright infringement.

If someone uses a CC-licensed work without following the licence, their right to use the work ends automatically as soon as they violate its terms.

Under CC version 4.0, users of CC-licensed works who come into compliance with licence terms within 30 days of discovering they were in violation of the terms have their rights under the licence automatically reinstated.

Sometimes, these types of disputes can end up in court.
Judicial decisions have been made in various places worldwide, and no courts have ever questioned the validity of the CC licence.

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

What is copyright?

9 December 2021 / Erica Levi

Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. It automatically grants all rights reserved to creators (no one else can copy, distribute, perform, adapt or otherwise use the work in violation of those exclusive rights).

Unlike other forms of IP, such as patents and trademarks, copyright protection exists automatically from the moment material is created. It does not have to be explicitly declared to be in effect.

Protection: a set of exclusive rights granted to authors to allow them to earn from their work and so incentivize them to produce new work
Dissemination: limits to the scope of exclusive rights to enable the spread of knowledge and dissemination of the works created through the copyright incentive

Creative Commons licences operate within copyright law, but they utilise a some rights reserved approach.

They grant the public permission to use the works under certain standardised conditions for as long as the underlying copyright lasts or until one violates the licence terms.

The licences were designed to be a free, voluntary solution for creators who want to grant the public up-front permissions to use their works.

See the following links:

What is the public domain?

What is copyrightable?

Economic and moral rights

Authorship and ownership of copyright

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

What is Intellectual Property (IP)?

9 December 2021 / Erica Levi

Intellectual Property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of human intelligence.

It empowers creators to restrict others from using their creative works. It includes copyright, patents and trademarks, which are all protected by specific laws:

Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution

Trademarks enable producers of goods and services to protect their reputation, and they safeguard the public by giving them a simple way to differentiate between similar products and services

Patents give inventors a time-limited monopoly on their inventions as an exclusive right to exploit them.

Design rights protect the visual appearance of an object or part of an object.

Other types of IP are trade secrets, publicity rights and moral rights

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Coventry University’s information and guidance

9 December 2021 / Erica Levi

The following resources provide you with the University’s information and guidance:

Coventry University’s copyright statement
Copyright for Academic Staff (login credentials required)
LibGuides – Copyright

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Copyright advice

9 December 2021 / Erica Levi

The Glasgow Caledonian University UK Copyright Advisor is a tool that gives online information (but not legal advice) on copyright considerations on audio files, book chapters, computer codes, images, journal articles, maps and video files.

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Exceptions in copyright

8 December 2021 / Erica Levi

In some parts of the world, copyright law has some limitations and allows some exceptions (for example, ‘fair use’ and ‘fair dealing’) to ensure that the rights of the public are not unduly restricted by copyright.

Thus, by offering exceptions to copyright, the Law permits certain very specific situations where you may be permitted limited use of copyright works without the copyright owner’s permission.

Exceptions and limitations to copyright vary by country, and they have territorial jurisdiction, meaning they apply only to that specific country.

In other words, since copyright law is unique to its jurisdiction, an exception could be valid in one country but not in others.

For more details, look at the Intellectual Property Office guide Exceptions to copyright: Education and Teaching.

See some more details of exceptions permitted by the UK in copyright law, with particular application to online teaching:

Fair dealing

Non-commercial research and private study exception

Criticism, review and reporting of current events

Teaching (in our case, specifically for online courses)

Helping disabled people

Parody, caricature and pastiche

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Exception: parody, caricature and pastiche

8 December 2021 / Erica Levi

It is essential to understand that this exception only permits use for the purposes of caricature, parody, or pastiche to the extent that it is fair dealing. This must not be derogatory or cause commercial harm to the original.

Please see this article on a court case

Only Fools and Horses firm sues creators of ‘cushty’ dining events

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Exception: helping disabled people

8 December 2021 / Erica Levi

There are two exceptions to copyright for the benefit of disabled people:

You, or someone acting on your behalf, make a copy of a lawfully obtained copyright work in a format that helps you access the material.
Educational establishments and charity organisations reproduce, communicate, make available, distribute and lend accessible format copies of protected works on behalf of disabled people. The exception permits acts such as:
- Making Braille, audio or large-print copies of books, newspapers or magazines for visually impaired people
- Adding audio descriptions to films or broadcasts for visually impaired people
- Making sub-titled films or broadcasts for deaf or hard-of-hearing people
- Making accessible copies of books, newspapers or magazines for dyslexic people.

However, the following requirements have to be met:

Accessible copies of copyright-protected works can be made only from lawfully-accessed copies
An accessible copy can only be made by a disabled person or an authorised body acting on their behalf
The copy can only be made for the personal use of a disabled person. Accessible copies cannot be made, communicated, made available, distributed or lent to a person who is not a disabled person under these exceptions
An accessible copy must only change a copyrighted work to the extent that is necessary to convert it to an accessible format
It must be done on a non-profit basis

Note: there is a discrepancy between accessibility regulations and copyright law, where the former doesn’t take precedent over the latter

Creating a transcript from a third-party-owned resource constitutes an adaptation, and it can only be done with the copyright holder’s permission.

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The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.