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Darius Whelan UCCMay 2014

Further Aspects of Copyright Law for Digital Teaching and

Learning

What is Creative Commons?• Non-profit corporation based in California • Founded on notion that some people may not want to exercise all of

the intellectual property rights the law affords them. • Believes there is an unmet demand for an easy way to tell the world

"Some rights reserved" or even "No rights reserved." • Many people want to share their work - and the power to reuse,

modify, and distribute their work - with others on generous terms. • Creative Commons intends to help people express this preference for

sharing by offering the world a set of licenses on its site, at no charge.

• UCC Law Faculty is Irish Partner • Website: www.creativecommonsireland.org • Focus of Creative Commons is on content (e.g. video, music, written

material) rather than software

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This means “More

Actions”

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• To download picture, select … [More Actions] • Download/ All Sizes • Choose the size you want and then choose

‘download’

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Other sites with Creative Commons material

• YouTube • Google Advanced Search – see ‘usage

rights’ section • Google Images Advanced Search • Europeana• search.creativecommons.org

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Important to attribute work

• Samples from Slideshare

photo CC BY martinak15 from Flickr

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The idea/expression dichotomy

• Copyright extends to expression of ideas not the ideas themselves

• S.17(3) Copyright protection shall not extend to the ideas and principles which underlie any element of a work, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts ….

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• Principles are not copyright• US case-law: facts are not copyright (Feist case) • E.g. Historical facts are not copyright• Even a historical theory is not copyright if it is

presented as a fact• U.S. merger doctrine: When a limited set of

words is needed to express an idea, anyone is free to use the set of words.

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Incidental inclusion

• 52.—(1) The copyright in a work is not infringed by its inclusion in an incidental manner in another work.

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Other areas of law

• Trademarks• Patents• Data Protection• Privacy

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Open Access Publishing

• Providing unrestricted access to scholarly work

Green – Author publishes in journal (which might not be open access) and self-archives elsewhere, e.g. CORA

Gold: Author publishes in open access journal

- Not possible if journal does not permit

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• Irish Research Council draft Open Access Policy– http://research.ie/aboutus/open-access

• Research Councils UK Open Access Policy– www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx

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Free and Open Source Licences • See www.oss-watch.ac.uk • Open Source Software

– Source code is viewable to all– Software may be distributed and changed – E.g. Mozilla Firefox

• Free Software– People are free to run program for any purpose, study

how program works, change it, redistribute copies, improve it, release improvements to the public

– E.g. GNU General Public Licence, Apache Licence

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• Permissive licences - do not seek to control how modified code is licensed. Modified code can form basis of closed source product

• Copyleft licences - offer right to distribute copies and modified versions of work and require same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work – Strong copyleft: If modified code is produced, the

software as a whole must be distributed under original licence

– Weak copyleft: If modified code is produced, some parts of the software must be distributed under original licence while other parts may be distributed under other licences

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• Free Culture Licences– Principles of free software applied to content– Include CC BY and CC BY SA

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• If using free / open source software, comply with terms of licence

• E.g. if distributing or adapting software, give credit to original authors of software

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Sources to consult

• Robert Clark, Shane Smyth and Niamh Hall, Intellectual Property Law in Ireland, 3rd ed. (2010)

• JISC: Legal Guidance for ICT Use in Education, Research and External Engagement – www.jisclegal.ac.uk

• Jane Secker, Copyright and e-Learning: A Guide for Practitioners (London: Facet Publishing, 2010)

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28Photo CC BY dbrekke from Flickr

@dariuswirl