Taking heritage online

Digital copyright and access

Why the need for this course (generally)?

One of the most important mistakes that people make in collaborative online projects is in dealing with copyright as an afterthought (handing it over to the lawyers to decide or even copying and pasting from other projects).

Decisions about copyright and open licensing are absolutely critical for collaborative online projects and will often determine the direction of the project from word go.

Copyright for collaborative online projects could determine the success or failure of a project that relies on volunteers. This means that it should always be dealt with early on, and should always start with the project team (rather than the lawyers).

This course is for that team.

Common questions that the workshop will answer

• How do I understand the term ‘open content’ as it relates to my project and my own role in the project?

• How does Wikipedia manage copyright and how does this influence user contribution?

• How do I mitigate risk while still keeping as much of my project open to user collaboration as possible?

• How do others make ‘open content’ sustainable?

• What are the ethical norms that are emerging regarding the online use of South African heritage and history?

The aim of this course is for non-lawyers working on online

heritage/history projects to confidently be able to begin a

process within their organisation to develop an online copyright strategy and workflow system.

The key outcome will be a first draft of a copyright strategy

for your project - complete with activities to engage

stakeholders and assess risk.

Outcomes

1.Participants will understand how copyright works and be able to distinguish between the different rights associated with works on the Internet.

2.Participants will understand how to determine the copyright status of a work, at what date copyright will lapse and the work fall into the public domain, and how to undertake due diligence in order to find the copyright owner of a work.

3.Participants will be able to read and understand copyright implications of terms and conditions and understand their impact.

4.Participants will understand all the options available in terms of copyright management, licensing and permissions, and be able to make informed decisions about their institution’s intellectual property and the intellectual property that they hold custody over.

5.Participants will understand the impact of different copyright licensing models on sustainability and business models.

Modules

•Trends, opportunities and threats A global look at the open content movement online - case studies of best case practice in sharing encyclopedic information / collaborative projects online.

•Terms and toolsWhat exactly is copyright and how do I make use of things like ‘exceptions and limitations’, the ‘public domain’ and ‘Creative Commons licenses’ to make my online collection user- and collaboration-friendly?

•Practical implementationHow does this all relate to my own collection in specific cases? How do I develop and implement a copyright strategy in my team so that everyone is educated about risk and work processes?

•Developing the strategy and work planWorkshopping the first draft of a strategy that will include goals, stakeholder identification, methodology, scenario-planning, measures for success, policy development, risk management and tracking

[one or two days - depending on how far the group would like to go with their copyright strategy]

Modules

Methodology

• 3 short lectures (with video and demonstrations) interspersed by conversations and workshopping of the components of the strategy;

• we subscribe to practical, participant-centered methodology and will adapt teaching to suit the needs of the group.

Trainer: Heather Ford

• Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board

• Founder of the African Commons Project and former ED of iCommons (Creative Commons subsidiary)

• BJourn (Rhodes) Telecommunications Policy (Wits) Digital Vision Fellow (Stanford) Currently enrolled for postgrad at Berkeley’s iSchool

• www.hblog.org

email: hfordsa@gmail.com or call 082 872 7374 or 011 327 3155