General information
Authors: A.A.Fuente, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain; A.Texeira, L.Morgado, Universidade Aberta, Portugal.
The general goal of this training material is to help teachers create academic materials while complying with the Intellectual Property (IP) laws, with licenses as the main point of interest. The focus is on Creative Commons (CC) licenses, as this licenses are probably the licenses of choice in the academic field.
Unit 1 introduces the main concepts needed to understand IP, including licenses. In Unit 2 we will learn about CC licenses and how to use them.
Unit 3 introduces additional IP concepts, as differences between countries in IP laws reside in these areas and they must be taken into account by the author of academic materials. These regional particularities are treated in Unit 4.
Creators of materials can use resources from others. In Unit 5 we will learn about the different types of resources that can be used, and a specific process to assure compliance with IP law when using these resources by checking the licenses. Unit 6 shows how to search for these resources considering the resource license.
The last unit is devoted to registration, which is usually the last thing done regarding IP when developing academic materials
Unit 5. Using third party resources
5.2. Process
It is important to plan how to use work from others, to have a process for that task. In this section a 3-phase process is proposed (with a Creative Commons licensed material bias)
5.2.1. Locate and decide
In the locate and decide phase, we should previously establish the purpose of the material: does it have commercial purposes or not?, does it have an academic scope?, etc.
Then we should locate the resource (or resources) we want to use in our own work, for example using search engines for resources.
Then we will decide the extent of the use: the whole resource or just a part of the resource.
5.2.2. Check license. Types of licenses
For each resource and extent of use we should ensure that the use we plan is valid. That is we should ensure that we hold a valid license for the resource (we have he author’s permission), in the form of a:
- Individual license (for example asking the author directly, or a more formal negotiation)
- General license
- Exception (no author’s permission needed)
5.2.3. Check license against purpose
It is mandatory that the license we hold matches the purpose of our work. That is, the use we plan and the purpose of our work are permitted by the license.
For example, if the license excludes commercial uses, and the purpose of our work is commercial, then we can not use the resource.
Other issues to consider is that the license may exclude the use or parts of the resource, or modifications (derivatives) may not be allowed.
5.2.4. Check license. Specifics
Some specific things to check when dealing with different types of licenses are:
- Individual license. In this kind of licenses the author is directly asked for permission to use his or her work. In this case we should state the specific purpose for which we need the permission.
- General license. We should check that the purpose of our work matches the general license conditions: commercial/non-commercial, modifications, use of parts, etc.
- Exception. In the case of exceptions to copyright there is no need to have author’s permission, but we should check that the purpose is compatible with the conditions stated in the exception. One of the usual things to check is the extent of the work that is exceptionally allowed to use without explicit permission.
5.2.5. Credit
Whenever we (legally) use materials from others, we should attribute the author of the material. This is mandatory in the case of CC licensed material. This is a traditional part of an author’s moral rights. In general, we should scrupulously honour the conditions of the license or exception.