Copyright & Creative Commons

Shihaam Donnelly Adapted by Thomas King and Kyle Rother

What is Copyright?

What is Copyright?

Rights include:● right to reproduce● right to adapt● right to distribute or sell● right to publish● right to perform or broadcast● freedom to transfer the rights● freedom to grant permission to use the

work in a specified manner

Copyright is default

Assume that anything you find on the internet is copyright unless stated otherwise:● many people assume that because

something is freely available online, that it is not subject to copyright, and can be used without restriction○ free/freely available ≠ public domain!

Copyright law

● Copyright is automatically assigned● In SA, copyright persists for 50 years after the

death of the creator, or the date of publication if it was not an individual creator

● Copyright owners may transfer their rights or grant individuals permission to use the work

● And most importantly: copyright applies to items, not ideas○ In order for copyright to apply, a work has

to have a physical manifestation

Fair dealing in education

Section 12 of the Copyright Act allows for fair dealing (in America they have Fair Use, which is similar, but different)● The use of copyrighted work without permission

from the copyright holder for illustrative purposes● Name of author and source must be mentioned

Educators can use copyrighted materials in the classroom for illustrative purposes, but are limited in that they cannot share their materials online

There is no clear definition of what constitutes fair use● Various factors are considered when determining fair

use

Adaptation and Revision

Remember, copyright refers to discrete items, not ideas or concepts

You can rework a copyrighted image, graph or visualisation to fit your context, so long as that reworking constitutes a qualitative change

Copyright permissions

If you are working at a university, your institution may have a blanket licencing agreement with the collecting society for literary and artistic works, which in SA is DALRO. This covers certain types of uses of a work by staff and students, such as copying chapters from textbooks, etc.

Works Who to request permission from

Printed works (published edition) Publisher or DALRO

Printed publications (pre-print or out-of-print) Author/s

Thesis Author

Photographs or Artworks Creators or DALRO

Company Publications Contact publications manager

Videos, films or DVDs Producers, suppliers or distributors

Sound recording – music SAMRO

Computer programs Software creators or distributors

Information on the internet Webmaster/author of post (for blogs)

Interviews Interviewer and Interviewees

Copyright permissions

Creative Commons

These licenses offer for a more flexible management of the exclusive rights offered by copyright, giving the creators the ability to make explicit how their work may be legally (re)used.