In This Section:
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
Did you realize these modules are an OER? Do you want to reuse the content, modify it for your students or colleagues? You can, with open licensing.
When discussing open licensing it is also important to review definitions of important terms and legal requirements of laws and principles applied to a creator’s work and how it can be used or reused. In addition to introducing and defining open licenses, this module will review and define copyright, fair use, public domain, and the different types of open licenses.
Copyright is a form of legal protection automatically provided to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. In the United States, copyright is automatically assigned to the creator of a work, with no registration necessary. In the words of the U.S. Copyright Office, "[A creator's] work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."
It can be unlawful to use copyrighted works of others without their permission, and no permissions are granted in the case of All Rights Reserved (ARR) works. Activities such as copying, modifying, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and distributing copies of ARR work may be illegal unless legal permission is granted by the creator. U.S. copyright law generally gives the author/creator or owner of an original creative work an exclusive right to:
Violation of one of these rights is called copyright infringement. However, the use may be authorized by copyright limitations (such as fair use) described below.
Start with an overview of fair use by viewing this short video:
Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism. Whether or not a specific use falls under Fair Use is determined by four factors:
Unfortunately, if the copyright owner disagrees with your fair use interpretation, the dispute may have to be resolved by a lawsuit or arbitration. If it’s not a fair use, then you are infringing upon the rights of the copyright owner and you may be putting yourself or the institution at risk. The only guidance for fair use is provided by a set of factors outlined in copyright law. These factors are weighed in each case to determine whether a use qualifies as a fair use.
Understanding the Fair Use principle is important to fully recognize the differences between how copyrighted material and openly licensed material or material in the public domain can be reused and shared legally.
Additional information on Fair Use and the TEACH Act can be found in this Copyright guide from the Medical University of South Carolina Libraries or this Copyright Crash Course from the University of Texas Libraries.
In Module 1 you learned that an open educational resource is either in the public domain or released with copyright permissions which allows for free use and repurposing by others. Specifically, an open license exists as a way for the original creator to clearly inform others how their work can be used by granting permissions to share and adapt their work. The variety of open license permissions known as Creative Commons (CC) are the predominant standards for open licenses. You will learn more about the six different CC license permissions in the next module.
This video, "What is an open license and how does it work?," provides more information about the benefits of an open license and how this standard makes sharing and reusing resources easy.
People often conflate Open Access and OER, or use them interchangeably, but they are not the same.
Let's revisit the definition of OER. They are freely and publicly available teaching learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license (usually a Creative Commons license) that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.
What is the definition of Open Access (OA)? Open Access refers to teaching, learning and research materials that can be accessed and downloaded at no charge, but they may not be revised, remixed, or redistributed. The term 'Open Access' or 'OA' is typically applied to scholarly works (journals, books, etc.), but can also apply to other class materials. Examples of OA materials include government documents, articles from open access journals, reports from think tanks.
It is the copyright status and license applied to a work which determine what you can and cannot do with the creative work of someone else. Knowing how to identify and differentiate between common types of copyright status will be useful when determining which content you may reuse, and how. One should assume that a work is all rights reserved, unless the creator explicitly states otherwise or the user of the work can prove it differently.
As you used the tools in Module 2 to search for OER, you probably encountered some open license symbols displayed in the infographic below.
Shaddim; original CC license symbols by Creative Commons, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
This infographic displays license types from the most open at the top, to the least open at the bottom. Don't worry if the symbols don't make sense yet; we'll learn more about them in the next module.
A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright, which means it’s free for you to use without permission. Works in the public domain are those whose intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable.
Here are some examples of works in the public domain:
Determining if a work is in the public domain can be difficult, because the terms of copyright protection in the United States have changed over time. The Cornell University Library Copyright Information Center is a useful tool for understanding what works might fall into the public domain.
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An author may, if they choose, enter their own work into the public domain at any time by applying a CC0 Public Domain Dedication, indicated by one of the images on the left, to the work. Public Domain is not a license, as creators of works in the public domain retain no rights to those works. It is also important to note that not all public domain works will display a Public Domain badge like the ones to the left. |
It is important to understand the difference between public domain and open license (such as Creative Commons licenses). They both grant free access to the materials, but the scope and nature are completely different.
Open licensing does recognize clear ownership of intellectual property and the work is still protected under copyright law, whereas works in the public domain are not protected by copyright law. Therefore, users are required to follow the license requirements when using openly licensed materials.
This infographic illustrates the differences between public domain, open license, and all rights reserved copyright.
Boyoung Chae, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In Module 5, Creative Commons Licensing, you will learn about the symbols for and permissions behind the six different Creative Commons Licenses. That module focuses on distinguishing between the different permissions for adoption, adaptation, creation, attribution, and reuse.
Take this short four-question quiz to test what you've learned so far about open licenses and copyright.
There is no discussion question for this module. The deadline for completing Modules 4 and 5 and responding to the discussion question at the end of Module 5 is Friday, November 10.
Information for this module was adapted from "Carrie Gits SPARC Capstone - ACC Learn OER" by Carrie Gits licensed under CC BY 4.0.
The section on "Open Access vs. Open Licenses" was adapted from "Open Educational Resources" by University of Mary Washington.
CC condition icons and license icons courtesy of Creative Commons.
