Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Librarian by Day Bobbi L. Newman has a step-by-step guide to How to attribute a Creative Commons photo from Flickr. If you’ve been wondering how to correctly credit a CC photo, you’ll want to check out this post which provides detailed examples and tips.

There are over 100 million photos available on Flickr which have been licensed with Creative Commons licenses and Michelle Thorne has published an analysis of them on the Creative Commons blog. Here are a few of her findings:

• 33% of them are equipped with the most restrictive CC License, BY-NC-ND. That means that over 32 million photos are available to download, display publicly, and distribute, as long as the author is attributed and no changes are made to the original image.
• The second most frequent license is BY-NC-SA. It allows derivative works for non-commercial purposes as long as those resulting works are made available under the same license. 29%, or 29 million images, can be used in this manner.
• 76% of all photos bar commercial use. At the same time, it means that 24%, or 24 million photos, do allow for commercial use with minimal restrictions.
• Over 12 millions photos are completely free to use, as long as the author of the image is attributed.
• Approximately 63 million of all available image files allow for derivative works.

The ARL and ALA have published A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement. Those of you who wish to get up to speed on exactly what occurred during the October 28th settlement concerning Google’s book scanning “Library Project” will want to check out this 23-page synopsis which explains the terms and conditions with a particular emphasis on the provisions which apply to libraries.

via Educause

The American University’s Center for Social Media released a new Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy guide yesterday.

“This guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials, wherever and however it occurs: in K–12 education, in higher education, in nonprofit organizations that offer programs for children and youth, and in adult education.”

The University of Michigan Library has announced that it will license all of its creative works including bibliographies, research guides, technology tutorials, and lesson plans under a Creative Common Attribution-Non-Commercial license. This will allow everyone to use, remix, and redistribute the library’s content as long as they credit the library and use it for non-commercial purposes. The license will be completely integrated into the library’s website redesign expected this fall.

via Open Access News

A project of Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Tales from the Public Domain: Bound by Law presents the ins-and-outs of public domain, fair use, and copyright law in an easy-to-understand format. This 70-page, masterfully illustrated and incredibly detailed comic book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, and offers free digital versions for download as well as makes individual pages accessible for remixing. If you’re interested in learning more about intellectual property law in an increasingly digitized and mashed-up culture, or you’re on the lookout for instructional materials, you’ll want to check this one out.

The Center for Social Media at American University’s School of Communication presents a best practices report for making online videos within the boundaries of fair use. Building on their previous report, Recut, Reframe, Recycle, the study guides video makers through acceptable practices according to copyright law. Some of these acceptable uses include:

• Commenting on or Critiquing of Copyrighted Material
• Using Copyrighted Material for Illustration or Example
• Capturing Copyrighted Material Incidentally or Accidentally
• Reproducing, Reposting, or Quoting in Order to Memorialize, Preserve, or Rescue and Experience, An Event, or a Cultural Phenomenon
• Copying, Reposting, and Recirculating a Work or Part of a Work for Purposes of Launching a Discussion
• Quoting in Order to Recombine Elements to make a New Work that Depends for its Meaning on (Often Unlikely) Relationships Between the Elements

So if you’re considering making video mashups, or using copyrighted video for instructional purposes, etc. you’ll want to check out this report.

via Social Media