P2PU Copyright Guide
This guide provides some general information and tips about copyright for P2PU Course Leaders and Students. This should not be substituted or relied on for legal advice.
Course Leaders and Designers: If there is a specific copyright query you need to clarify in relation to your course, please email p2pu-community at googlegroups dot com to seek advice and one of our volunteer lawyers will try to assist.
Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright
Why is copyright important?
Copyright is important because it gives creators control over their creative works. This means they can decide who uses their work, how it can be used and if they will charge a fee to other people who want to use it. This gives creators the ability to earn a living from their works and/or to control how their works are used or disseminated.
What is copyright?
A simple definition of copyright is that it is a bunch of rights in certain creative works (literary works, artistic works, musical works, computer programs, sound recordings, films and broadcasts) to stop others from copying the creative works without permission.
At its most basic it is simply the right to copy.
The rights are granted exclusively to the copyright owner to reproduce (copy, scan) and communicate (email, put on internet) the material, and for some material, the right to perform or show the work to the public. Copyright owners can prevent others from reproducing or communicating their work without their permission. Only the copyright owner can licence or sell these rights to someone else.
How does it work?
Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, styles or techniques. For example, copyright will not protect an idea for a film or book, but it will protect a script for the film or even a storyboard for the film.
Copyright is a separate right to the property right in an object. For example, this means that the person may own a book or painting but will not also own the copyright in the book or painting unless it has been specifically assigned (sold) to them.
In most countries, copyright protection is automatic. For example, there is no need for copyright registration in Australia, nor is there a legal requirement to publish the work or to put a copyright notice on it. A work will be protected as soon as it is put into material form, such as being written down or recorded in some way (filmed or recorded on an audio tape).
It is important to note that each country has its own specific copyright legislation and rules which will apply to your use of other people’s copyright material.
Plagiarism
Copyright is different to plagiarism. Plagiarism is about using someone else’s work and pretending it is your own. Copyright is about having to obtain permission to use someone else’s work.
What sorts of things does copyright protect?
Copyright protects lots of different types of works. For example:
Artistic Works
Paintings, photographs, maps, graphics, cartoons, charts, diagrams
and illustrations
Literary Works
Novels, textbooks, poems, song lyrics, newspaper articles, computer software, computer games
Musical Works
Melodies, song music, advertising jingles, film scores
Dramatic works
Plays, screenplays and choreography
Films and moving images
Feature films, short films, documentaries, television programs, interactive games, television advertisements, music videos and vodcasts
Sound recordings
MP3 files, CDs, DVDs, vinyl and tape recordings, podcasts.
Broadcasts
Pay and free-to-air television and radio
It is important to note that online text, images, broadcasts, videos and music on websites, wikis, blogs and social networking sites are protected by copyright. See Public Domain below.
Who owns copyright?
The person who creates a work will normally own copyright in it.
In general:
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the creator of a visual art work will own the copyright in the artwork
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the author of a poem will own copyright in the poem
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the composer of a song will own copyright in the music of a song.
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the film company and/or producer will own copyright in the film
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the record company will own the copyright in the recording of music
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the Broadcaster will own the copyright in the radio or television broadcast.
In most countries, employers will own the copyright in the works created by their employees as part of their job. Independent contractors will in general own the copyright in their creations unless the contract that engages them requires the copyright in the work to reside with the commissioner of the work.
A copyright owner may give someone else permission to copy their work. This is known as a licence. Please see Why is licensing important? below.
Sometimes the copyright owner will ask for payment in exchange for giving permission. Sometimes the copyright owner will give permission to use their work for free, subject to certain conditions. See Creative Commons below.
How long does copyright last?
The period for copyright protection will differ in each country. In addition the period of protection will differ depending on the type of creative work.
For example in Australia,
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Copyright in artistic, literary, musical and dramatic works are protected from the time the work is created until 70 years after the creator has died.
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Copyright in films, sound recordings and broadcasts lasts for 70 years from the end of the year in which the work is released.
By way of comparison, in the United States, copyrighted works are protected until 70 years after the death of the author. If it’s a work of corporate authorship, then protection lasts 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.
What is the public domain?
A work is in the public domain if it is not restricted by copyright. In most of the world, once the period of copyright protection expires, the work is in the public domain.
In the United States, the public domain extends to works of the United States government, including federal laws, regulations, judicial opinions, government documents and legislative reports. U.S. government works are any works prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties, although projects written by non-government authors with federal funding may be protected by copyright and not in the public domain.
When a work is in the public domain, it means that anyone can copy the work without having first to obtain permission from the copyright owner.
It is a common misconception, that once a work is published or available for free from the internet, that it is in the public domain. This is not correct. Material that is made freely and publicly available on the internet such as online newspaper or journal articles or images on Google or Flickr are protected by copyright.
A work can also become part of the public domain via use of Creative Commons CC0 (read CC Zero) public domain waiver, which allows a creator to waive all of his or her copyright and neighboring and related rights in a work, to the fullest extent permitted by law. See Creative Commons below for further explanation.
When can you use other people’s work?
If you want to use someone else’s work, you can generally only use it if:
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the copyright owner has said that it can be used for free, eg under a Creative Commons licence. See the section on Creative Commons.
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you ask the copyright owner for permission and they give it. This is called a permission or a license.
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your use is permitted under your country’s copyright legislation. Most countries’ copyright legislation has exceptions or defences to copyright infringement. For example in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand there are a list of exceptions called ‘fair dealing” that allow some copying for research and study, criticism and review, reporting the news and giving legal advice. In the United States, there is a general exception which is referred to as fair use. In Europe, exceptions to copyright infringement are set out in the relevant civil code.
The rules in relation to “fair dealing” and “fair use” are quite complex and the use must be fair. We recommend that you only use quotes or small extracts not whole works and that you always attribute the author and publisher where the source is known.
Why is licensing important?
Only a copyright owner can give you a licence/ permission to reproduce their works.
Although in some circumstances, you may be able to rely on fair dealing or fair use to include extracts of a work as part of assignments and group work, you may not necessarily rely on these exemptions to create open education resources using those works without a licence/ permission.
Rather than seeking licences from individual copyright owners to include their work in your course curriculum, we recommend the following Smart Tips when developing your course materials
Smart Tips - Working with Copyright and your Project at P2PU
Linking
Linking is not a copyright activity. This is because you are not actually ‘copying’ or ‘communicating’ any material, you are just providing a path to its location on another website. Providing links to material on external websites will not infringe copyright and you do not need to seek permission from the website owner to include a link to their website.
Embedding
Embedding is another type of linking, except you don’t have to leave your website (e.g. blog or wiki) or intranet to access the content. It is commonly used for displaying online films on websites, e.g. YouTube films.
Embedding involves copying the HTML code of the film, which is often displayed in a box near the film, and pasting it onto your website. The result of this is, rather than displaying the link, it will show a small screen of the film on your website.
The primary advantage to embedding material is that you do not need to copy the material in order to make it available on your website. Some websites, such as YouTube, provide the link for embedding films. This makes embedding an easy and practical alternative to copying.
Material created by you
If you are using material that is your own original work and does not contain any material created by another person, you do not need to rely on the special provisions/ exceptions in your country’s copyright legislation as you are the copyright owner.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
The internet contains a variety of OER material that is licenced under Creative Commons. There are also many websites which are ‘free for education’. This is because their website terms and conditions permit material contained on the website to be copied for ‘educational purposes’.
The following table provides a summary of when the terms and conditions of a website indicate that the material is ‘free for education’.
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Website Terms
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Is the website Free for Education?
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Personal Use
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No
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Personal use and non commercial
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No
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Personal use, non commercial
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No
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Personal use or non commercial
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Yes
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Private or individual use
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No
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Use in your organisation
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Yes
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© name and/or year and no terms of use
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No
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No copyright © name and/ or year or no terms and conditions
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No
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Educational use
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Yes
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All Rights Reserved
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No
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One problem with terms and conditions on websites is that sometimes the terms and conditions of use can change and often there may be conflicting terms and conditions on the one website. In some instances, it is not clear what the terms and conditions allow. This is why we recommend where possible to link to or embed websites and to use Creative Commons licensed material. See Creative Commons below
Creative Commons
The most common source of open education material is licensed under Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a set of licences which creators attach to their work. All Creative Commons licences allow the material to be used for educational purposes. As a result, material available under a Creative Commons licence is ‘free for education’. Depending on the type of CC licence used, a teacher and student may also modify and share the material.
For more information, see the ‘Creative Commons Information Pack’: http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/pid/956.
We recommend using Creative Commons licensed material where possible as the licenses
It also means that you do not have to spend time trying to work out whether your intended use of someone else’s work is covered by fair use or fair dealing or some other exemption under your country’s copyright legislation.
There are six standard CC licences. The table below lists these licences and the different conditions which attach to each.
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Licence
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Symbols
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Type of use
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You can
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Attribution (BY)
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Commercial and
non-commercial
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Attribution-Noncommercial (BY-NC)
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Non-commercial only
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Attribution-Share Alike (BY-SA)
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Commercial and
non-commercial
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Copy;
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Adapt or modify;
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Redistribute (publish, display, publicly perform or communicate the work); and
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License to others on the same terms as the original work.
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Attribution-No Derivative Works (BY-ND)
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Commercial and
non-commercial
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Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)
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Non-commercial only
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Copy;
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Adapt or modify;
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Redistribute (publish, display, publicly perform or communicate the work); and
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License to others on the same terms as the original work.
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Attribution-Noncommercial-
No Derivative Works(BY-NC-ND)
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Non-commercial only
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We recommend using material licensed under:
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Creative Commons Attribution BY
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Creative Commons Attribution BY Share Alike
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Creative Commons Attribution BY Non Commercial
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Creative Commons Attribution BY Non Commercial Share Alike
Creative Commons offers legal tools in addition to the six standard licenses. For example, CC0 is a legal tool that allows a creator to waive all of his or her copyright and neighboring and related rights in a work, to the fullest extent permitted by law. If the waiver isn’t effective for any reason, then CC0 acts as a license from the affirmer granting the public an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty free license to use the work for any purpose. CC0 is intended to place the work in the public domain to the fullest extent permitted by law.
For more information about CC0 please review the CC0 FAQ.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ
For more information see:
Crediting and Attributing Material
Other’s work
We recommend labelling all material with details of the copyright owner and author (if different to the copyright owner), the name of the work, where the material was copied from and when it was copied.
Creative Commons
When attributing a work under a Creative Commons licence you should:
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Credit the creator;
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Provide the title of the work;
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Provide the URL where the work is hosted;
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Indicate the type of licence it is available under and provide a link to the licence (so others can find out the licence terms); and
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Keep intact any copyright notice associated with the work.
e.g. Peter Alexander, ‘Sounion Temple’, http://www.flickr.com/photos/40681760@N07/3961143351/, 5 August 2009. Available under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
See also:http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/webdav/site/scwsite/shared/attribute.pdf
and http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking
P2PU Copyright Terms of Use and Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Licence (CC BY SA)
All content hosted on P2PU.org is licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA). This allows anyone to copy, modify, share, and build upon our work, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit us and license new creations derived from our work under the same conditions. The summary below describes the allowances others have with CC-BY-SA material.
You are free:
Under the following conditions:
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Attribution — you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
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Share Alike — if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.
With the understanding that:
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Waiver — any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
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Public Domain — where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
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Other Rights — in no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
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Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
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The author's moral rights;
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Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
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Notice — for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page
Creative Commons Licence Compatibility
The CC-BY-SA license also has implications for what materials you can use if you will be creating new content using others work for your course. If you intend to remix open educational materials (OER) for your course, we highly recommend reading Creative Commons' chart on Creative Commons Licence Compatibility below. Remember linking to materials is not a copyright activity so you may link to a resource.
This is a license compatibility matrix from the Creative Commons FAQ Wiki, re-used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions)
The green boxes indicate license compatibility. That is, you may use the license indicated in the top row for your derivative work or adaptation, or for a collective work. The blank rows for the by-nc-nd and by-nd licenses indicate that derivative works or adaptations are not permitted by the license of the original work, therefore you are never allowed to re-license them.
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Compatibility chart
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Terms that can be used for a derivative
work or adaptation
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by
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by-nc
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by-nc-nd
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by-nc-sa
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by-nd
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by-sa
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pd
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Status of original
work
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pd
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by
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by-nc
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by-nc-nd
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by-nc-sa
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by-nd
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by-sa
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Fair use/fair dealing note: CC Licenses do not change, alter, or modify fair use/fair dealing rights. You may still use fair use/fair dealing rights to incorporate CC works for any qualifying purpose. This chart is not a substitute for obtaining your own legal advice, nor should it be relied upon or represented as legal advice.
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