4.2 Copyright responsibilities
Given the ease with which online material can be reused, whether it belongs to you or someone else, it is very important to be aware of the implications for copyright owners and users.
Copyright holders
Unless assigned to another party by contract (e.g., employment or publisher) the copyright holder is usually the person who has created (authored) an original work. This might be a picture, photograph, song, text or a piece of software. As long as it is saved in a fixed form, they control the rights (IPRs) to that content. As you’ve already discovered, the author’s rights are automatic from the time the work is created.
To make it clear that work is owned by an individual, it is often a good idea to record ownership of the work itself. You can do this using the copyright symbol, ©, on the work itself, for example ‘© Jane Bloggs (date)’. If you are the copyright holder, you should consider in what ways you would allow use of your work without asking for your permission. You can also add this to your work using Creative Commons licences for example. It is a good idea to add on your contact details so that users can contact you to request permission which is not covered.
Copyright users
A copyright user is anyone who uses someone else’s original work. It’s easy to find material online, but it’s also important to ensure you have permission to use it as you intend which may include presenting it via a different media. Copyright protection exists in all media (and all territories) including the internet. Just because you find material online, you should not assume that you have the permission of the copyright owner to reuse it. You do have the right to read and look at it online though. Unless the rightsowner has specified permission on their work, you will need to seek permission to copy it and share it online or distribute it further.
A copyright user has the responsibility to:
- contact the copyright owner to ask permission to reuse their material, unless a permission exists on their work such as a Creative Commons licence to copy and share their work
- credit the original creator of the work in the form of an acknowledgement. This will state the name of the work you copied, the author, the url or page numbers (if applicable) and the date of the original publication, for example ‘extract from Pring, S. (2015) ‘Springtime walks’, Spring into action, 1 April [blog] Available at http://springintoactionblog.wordpress.com (Accessed 1 April 2016)’.
Exceptions
There are a number of exemptions under copyright law such as Fair Dealing in the UK and Fair Use in the US. These are ‘defences’ which mean that, while there is provision to use content without permission, this use can be challenged by rights owners if they do not agree with the interpretation of Fair Dealing.
Exemptions under Fair Dealing are:
- criticism, review, and more recently, parody
- news reporting
- personal study and non-commercial research
- education (personal study and other limited provision).
The exemption for education allows students and academic researchers to access and copy the work of others (as they wish) as long as that original work is properly credited and the use is fair. Note: use of a whole work (for example, a book) may not be fair under this provision. Students and researchers use reference lists and bibliographies to credit the contributions of others in the development of their own ideas.
Creative Commons licences, set out in easy to understand language and symbols, provide a means for establishing specific rights without the need to contact the copyright owner. This is explained on the next page.