2.1 Introduction to Copyright and Open Licensing
Copyright
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 According to the World International Property Organization, “Copyright is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps and technical drawings.” These works cannot be reproduced, performed, recorded, or adapted without written permission of the author. For educators, this has implications for which materials they can use and how they can use them.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The level and type of protection of copyright varies between countries. In general, copyright is territorial, which means that it does not extend beyond the territory of a specific state unless that state is a party to an international agreement. While many aspects of national copyright laws have been harmonised through international copyright agreements, copyright laws in most countries have some unique features.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Copyright is usually for a limited time. The period of protection varies as well among the countries, while a number of local and international laws and conventions assure that copyright applied in a country is recognised and protected in many others.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Copyright is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights-holders. These rights (also known as ‘authors’ rights’) secure protection of both the economic interests of authors – such as reproduction, control over derivative works, and distribution – as well as their moral interests (e.g. protection against unauthorised use of their works).
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1 Moreover, creators and authors might not be the only copyright owners of a given work. This has very important implications for educators, because in many cases their universities are also copyright owners of the works the produce as employees. In those cases, technically the academics would need permission from their employers before being able to release their work under Creative Commons.
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 The world’s first copyright law was the Statute of Anne, enacted in England in 1710. This Act introduced for the first time in the history the concept of the author of a work being the owner of its copyright, and laid out fixed terms of protection. Nowadays, each country has its own copyright laws. However, there are some international standards, most based on the Berne Convention. Under the Berne Convention, each country gives original works from any country the same protections, regardless of the laws of the country where they originated. For example, if you find an e-book online by an author from another country, it’s protected by the same copyright laws as a book by an author from your own country. The Berne Convention grants copyright protection to “every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression”. Therefore, what lies at the heart of copyright law is the distinction between artistic works and mere ideas.
¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Copyright law protects only the form of expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Using ideas expressed in a work does not represent a copyright violation. For copyright to be infringed, one has to copy the form in which the ideas are expressed.
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 It should be noted that copyright also protects ‘derivative works’ – such as translations, adaptations, and music arrangements – without prejudice to the copyright in the pre-existing work. In other words, an author of a translation needs first to obtain authorisation from the author of the work. Computer programmes are protected under the copyright laws of a number of countries, including the EU, as well as under the WIPO Copyright Treaty. The same applies to databases.
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 With the coming of the digital era, copyright is facing several issues since restrictions on reuse do not always fit well with how we use and share information in the digital sphere; furthermore, society benefits most from certain types of content when they can freely circulate.
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 To maintain a fair balance between the interests of users and rights-holders, copyright protection is subject to two types of limitations. On the one hand, works are protected only for a certain period of time, at the expiration of which they may be used freely. On the other hand, during the term of protection, a number of exceptions and limitations, allows for copyrighted works to be used without a license from the copyright owner.
¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 From the educational perspective the main category of exception is the so-called ‘fair use’, and concerns particular acts of exploitation, normally requiring the authorisation of the rights-holder, which may, under strict circumstances, be carried out without authorisation. Examples of fair use include: quoting from a protected work, provided that the source of the quotation and the name of the author is mentioned; and use of works by way of illustration for teaching purposes and news reporting. Interestingly, exceptions and limitations have not been harmonised at the international level. Indeed, the right to quote is the only mandatory exception provided for by the Berne Convention. However, all national copyright laws grant exceptions and limitations based on the notion of “legitimate interest” and which fall into four main categories: promotion of freedom of expression (quoting works for the purpose of criticism or parody); access to knowledge (e.g. replacement of lost or damaged copies in libraries; the production of alternative versions in large print or braille of a copyrighted work for visually impaired persons); the requirements of justice and the functioning of the government (e.g. official texts and court rulings); and finally, private or personal use.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Nonetheless, a rights-holder may also decide to abandon their exercise of the rights, wholly or partially (i.e., posting copyright protected material on the internet for a fee, or restricting the abandonment to non-commercial use) (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/564380/EPRS_BRI(2015)564380_EN.pdf).
Free licenses and Open licenses
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 As answer to the current copyright challenges, open licensing movements have rise in the last years, with a significant impulse from the open software communities.
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 An open license is a license agreement which describes the conditions in which, the users can perform a variety of uses for intellectual or artistic works granted by the holder of the intellectual property, which gives the users more freedom when using someone else’s works.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Through open licenses, authors grant permission for users to reproduce, adapt, or distribute the work, with the accompanying requirement that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same licensing agreement. Open licenses are a novel use of existing copyright law to ensure a work remains freely available. Examples of such licences include the GNU General Public Licence – the first and most widely used software copyleft licence – and Creative Commons Licences.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Free software licenses are the legal tools that have been used since the 1980s to promote free software development and distribution: they are legal acts by which the author licenses copyrights (and patent rights) to allow users to enjoy the freedoms provided by the free software definition. Therefore, for a program to be free software, it is enough that the right holder distributes it under the terms of a suitable license: a free software license.
¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 In 1989, Richard Stallman wrote the first version of the GNU-GPL license, unifying similar licenses he used for earlier versions of his programs. Nowadays the GNU-GPL license is adopted by a large number of projects and it is at the heart of the free software movement. Wide adoption of this license is partly due to historical reasons (it’s the license created by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Movement) but also to practical reasons: the engineering of this license favored for the spreading of free software. In fact, the GNU-GPL provides that the user is allowed to modify and redistribute software licensed under this license provided that the modified version is in turn licensed under the terms of the same license.
¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 To put it briefly, open licenses foster sharing: whoever wants to modify the content and distribute it (or, sometimes, allow its remote use) can do so provided that he in turn gives the users the same freedoms that were granted to him.
Activity 2.1
¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 Please check your understanding on copyright and public domain with the following multiple choice questions: notice that only one answer is correct. You find the correct answers in the following page.
¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 1) Can I re-use ideas from a copyrighted work?
- ¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0
- No if ideas are expressed in a copyrighted work
- Yes. Ideas are not covered by copyright. Copyright protect the form of expression of the ideas
- You can use ideas only after the copyright expired
¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 2) What is covered by the ‘fair use’ exception?
- ¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0
- Only ideas expressed in copyrighted works
- Quoting from a protected work, without the mention of the source of the quotation and of the name of the author
- The ‘fair use’ exception concerns particular acts of exploitation, normally requiring the authorisation of the rights-holder, which may, under strict circumstances, be carried out without authorisation
¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 3) Is copyright unlimited in time?
- ¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0
- Yes
- No. Copyright expires always in 10 years
- No. Usually copyright is limited in time. The period of protection varies as well among the countries
Correction?: the works they produce