APaul Keller | 27 july 2009

copyright basics

• copyright arises automatically at the moment a work (not an idea) is created.

• condition: sufficient (>=0) originality

• expires 70 years after the death of the author (or in case of institutional authors 70 years after first publication)

• is an exclusive right to interdict any any uses of the copyrighted work

• copyright law protects authors. performing artists ar protected by so-called neighbouring rights.

• technical protection measures (DRM) form a protective layer on top of copyright protection.

exploitation and moral rights

• copyrights

• temporary and permanent reproductions of the work in any medium. modification of a work

• broadcasting, publishing, distributing, renting, performing, showing, making available, ‘on-demand services’

• moral rights

• non transferable rights of the author to protect the integrity of her personality. (right to first publication, attribution, protects against unauthorised modifications, destruction of works.)

exceptions and limitations

• there are a number of exceptions and limitations of copyright protection (fair use rights in the US). there is no international standardisation of these rights.

• the right to make quotations

• private copying

• educational exceptions

• reporting about public intrest events

• re use of press material by the press

personality/publicity rights

• publicity rights allow individuals to control how their voice, image or likeness is used for commercial purposes in public.

• are different form copyrights or any other intellectual property right.

• are not internationally harmonized to the same extend as copyright.

• protect the persons depicted in photos, videos and audio recordings (usually not the person holding copyright).

• rule of thumb: If a CC-licensed work includes the voice or image of anyone other than the licensor, a user of the work may need to get permission from those individuals before using the work for commercial purposes.

The challenges posed by copyright

• do not sufficiently recognize that there are other motivations for knowledge production than rent seeking.

• limits authors who want to share information and works

• limits access to information especially for so called orphan works (that have become accessible via digital networks)

• pursue a one size fits all approach that threats professionals, non-professionals, government actors, educational users and large commercial distributers the same.

about Creative Commons

A

about Creative Commons

• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization We work to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing.

• CC provides free, easy-to-use legal tools Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The Creative Commons licenses enable people to easily change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”

the Creative Commons licenses

the Creative Commons licenses (1)

• the Creative Commons licenses are the most widely used open content licenses:

• more than a 100 million photographs on flickr.com are available under a creative commons licens

• it is the standard copyright license used by wikipedia.org

• It is quickly becoming the standard licensing scheme for Open Educational Ressources (OER).

• they are an instrument for creators to exercise their copy rights: to give away certain rights while reserving others

• Creative Commons offers six different standard licenses that can be used by anyone free of charge:

the six Creative Commons licenses

Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDeriveratives

Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike

Attribution - NonCommercial

Attribution - NoDeriveratives

Attribution - ShareAlike

Attribution

the Creative Commons licenses (2)

• the Creative Commons licenses have been designed for the internet but they can be used off-line as well.

• the were designed with ordinary creators in mind and have three different ‘layers’:

• the commons deed (a ‘human readable’ summary of the main license terms)

• the full license (the ‘lawyer readable’ complete license)

• a machine readable expression using RDFa (using the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language)

<span xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/MovingImage" property="dc:title" rel="dc:type">sign lanuguage introduction</span> by <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.ru.nl/corpusngt/" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Onno Crasboom</a> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.ru.nl/corpusngt/more" rel="cc:morePermissions">http://www.ru.nl/corpusngt/more</a>.

the Creative Commons Licenses (rights)

• all six Creative Commons licenses allow everyone to:

• to Share - to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work (for non-commercial purposes)

• to transfer the work into another format

• under the condition that the user gives proper attribution to the original author and provides a link to the licenses

• the licensor can choose if she wants to limit these rights to non-commercial uses of the licensed work or allow reuse and distribution for commercial purposes as well.

the Creative Commons licenses (reuse)

• the author can further determine if he wants to allow distribution or performance of derivative works (remixes) or not (No Derivative Works)

• it is also possible to make the right to distribute remixes conditional on the fact that they are also released under a Creative Commons license that allows remixing (ShareAlike)

Important characteristics

• expressly drafted not to limit 'fair use' rights

• a non-exclusive, irrevocable public license

• CC licensor enters into a separate license agreement with each user

• no warranties

• license terminates immediately upon breach

• does not cover personality rights

choosing a license