A brief intro to copyright, public domain & Creative Commons

As part of the course work for the Digital Citizenship class, my students are required to use Creative Commons images. For anyone who has never used these kinds of resources before, it can seem a little confusing at first. Here's a very general overview of terms.

Photo: Stella Bastone

Since I took this photo, I am the
copyright holder. In most cases,
the name of the photographer is listed
with the image. Permission must
be granted before anyone can use a 
copyrighted photograph, even if it's
available to view for free online. 

Copyright

Any creative work automatically has copyright protection on it. This means that any original photograph, illustration, blog post, poem, book, video, song, etc., is protected by copyright laws as soon as it takes a fixed format (that is, the moment it's tranferred from the creator's mind onto a medium such as a canvas, a .jpg file, a Word file, etc.).

"Copyright" means the "right to copy." Only the copyright holder can decide how the work will be used. If anyone else wants to use that work, they need to get the copyright holder's permission (and/or pay for it, depending on the case).

We can generally quote a small portion of a written copyrighted work, but we must always cite the source. (Depending on your program, this requires APA or MLA style citation.)

Example of a
public domain image.
(See attribution at the
bottom of this page.)

Public Domain

In most countries, copyright expires 70 years after the death of the creator. (In Canada, it has traditionally been 50 years after death, but because of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we will soon be switching to 70 years.) When the copyright on a work expires, the work goes into the public domain. That means that it belongs to the public. Anyone can freely use the work, and make copies, without having to seek permission.

It's important to give attribution to public domain works so your audience knows what it is, who created it, and where you got it. The attribution information can go directly beneath the image, or at the bottom of the page, or another reasonable area that viewers can easily see.

Example of a CC image.
(See attribution at the
bottom of this page.)

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is an organization that paved the way for creators to make their work available to others freely without having to seek and grant permission. (This is a legal way of getting around the complications of  traditional copyright in our digital era.) The creator is still the copyright holder, but by making their work available under a CC license, they are declaring, "I am the creator of this work and I hereby release it to the world to use. You don't have to ask my permission to copy it, but you DO have to give me attribution--let others know I have created it." CC has several variations that I'll cover in an upcoming post.

When using CC works, give attribution directly beneath the image, or at the bottom of the page in an easy-to-find spot.

Image: Shutterstock

Royalty Free

Royalty free works are not actually free. These are works that have a copyright on them, and you generally only have to pay for them once, but you don't have to pay a royalty every single time you use the work. For example, if you buy an image from Shutterstock under the regular license, you can use the image in multiple places even though you paid only once. Different royalty-free services have different conditions--it's important to read what you're paying for. I purchased the image on the left from Shutterstock, and I can use it in multiple places without having to pay again, but I can't give the file to another user. No one can legally download this image and reuse it without paying Shutterstock a fee. When you've paid for a RF image and using it for small non-editorial purposes, you don't have to give credit to the creator, although you're free to do so.


See the image credits below for an example of acceptable attribution. Note that you are always free to add more information, but be sure at include at least the name of the item if available, the name of the creator, the name of license if it's CC or public domain, and the web address it was retrieved from.

______________________________

Image Credits

1. Unnamed photograph of mounted butterflies by Stella Bastone. [Note to students: I can post this because it's my own copyright.]
2. "Blueberries in market, close-up" by Flickr user Arria Belli. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blueberries_in_market,_close-up.jpg .
3. "A Girl Reading" by Charles Edward Perugini. Original in Manchester Art Gallery. Image in the public domain. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Girl_Reading.Charles_Edward_Perugini.jpg .
4. Image from Shutterstock.

On deciding what to blog about

I knew I was going to create a new blog to share with my classes, but have had a very hard time deciding what the focus would be. After giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to make this about aspects of digital citizenship. I'll be sharing it with two of my classes: the first is a group of students in my Digital Citizenship course, and the second is a group of professors enrolled in a professional development course I'm teaching.

I want to make clear that I understand how very hard it can be to create and maintain a blog. It draws constant questions, self-checks, and even doubts: What do I want to show the world about myself? Who will see it? When? What impression am I creating? Should I use this word, that picture--how will I be judged? Am I making mistakes here? Is this post a bit pointless? Has someone already said all of this? Does the world need another blog like mine? What value am I bringing? Really, why am I doing this? 

Blogging isn't easy. The good news is that we're in good company. In every great blog I've read, the writers stopped and questioned themselves, their motivation, their skill--sometimes to the point that the blog became a running meditation on the blogging experience.

It's hard but it's exciting. What can be more potentially illustrative of ourselves than our choice of word, style, colour, image, attitude, line and even font? These parts come together to create an impression in the same way that our moments in public do--the clothes we wear, the way we style our hair, the way we walk, the things we get done, the things we say, the things we don't say, how we treat people.  Sometimes one way among this group, another way among these others. The parts of a blog similarly project who we are.  The message, ultimately, is this is me.