Understanding your copyrights at the University of Kansas
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
- Understand the basics of copyright.
- Understand the basics of open access and openly licensed materials.
- Understand your educational privacy rights.
Getting Licensed
In this class and your future career you will be a creator of information. As a creator, you should be aware of licensing or who owns your creation, also called intellectual property, and who is allowed to use it.
To help you make informed decisions about sharing your work, we will provide a brief overview of licensing your work and your rights to privacy as a student. We will talk about licensing in terms of it being open and closed. The topic of licensing is far more complex, as the careers of many, many attorneys will attest. Regardless of the legal intricacies, we use this loose binary for this introduction to licensing and sharing your work as a student.
Closed licensing
Copyright
What we consider closed licensing is probably the type of publication licensing with which you are most familiar: copyright. The definition of copyright varies from country to country. In the United States, copyright is defined by the U.S. Copyright Office as follows:
“A form of protection provided by the laws of the United States for ‘original works of authorship’, including literary, dramatic, musical, architectural, cartographic, choreographic, pantomimic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and audiovisual creations. ‘Copyright’ literally means the right to copy but has come to mean that body of exclusive rights granted by law to copyright owners for protection of their work. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, title, principle, or discovery. Similarly, names, titles, short phrases, slogans, familiar symbols, mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, coloring, and listings of contents or ingredients are not subject to copyright.”
So many words. Let’s break this down in the context of being a student at the University of Kansas.
Essentially, when someone writes or creates something original, their tangible product is automatically covered under copyright. You may have seen the phrase “all rights reserved.” This means that the creator has the right to sell or profit from their creation and limit other people’s use of their work. Copyright allows creators to control how their work is used, and to profit from their labor.
Say, for instance, that a scholar publishes an article in a copyrighted, or closed, journal. You cannot make copies of the article and hand it out as party favors. You cannot reproduce the article or take huge chunks of it and publish them as part of your writing. This is because the author and publisher of the article has the right to restrict your use of the article. The author wants to be given credit for all of their work (via citations), and the publishing company wants to make money from selling access to the journal.
Copyright owners protect their rights in many ways. For example, you may recall that when you use the library’s databases while off campus, you have to log in with your university ID and password. This is because your library signs contracts with copyright owners, that is, publishing and database companies. The library promises that it will share copyrighted articles from those databases only with people affiliated with the university, such as faculty, students and staff. If the library breaks its end of the bargain, the publishing and database companies will immediately cut off the entire university’s access to their resources.
On a smaller scale, if you step on someone’s copyright in your own work, you may get a strongly worded cease-and-desist email from an attorney. You might take down the copyrighted work, reply with an apology and move on with your life. But if you take your violation too far, you may face legal action.
If you are still confused about copyright, watch this short video created by a leading copyright expert, or visit the the U.S. Copyright Office.
Fair use
All rights are reserved under copyright, but there is some wiggle room called fair use. Fair use is one element of copyright law that allows folks to criticize and comment on copyrighted works within limits. It also affords students and instructors to copyrighted materials for educational purposes. Fair use doesn’t let you do whatever you want just because you are using something for class. There are rules. Those rules are defined through a four-factor test. Each factor of the test is weighted equally when considering if the use of copyrighted materials falls under fair use. Copyright Advisory Services at Columbia University Libraries provides a short and sweet overview of the four factors of fair use, upon which the following is based.
- The purpose and character of the use: Because you are here to learn and not make a profit, your work is probably for nonprofit educational purposes. But you may want to use copyrighted work with a commercial purpose. When using any copyrighted material, remember to “transform” it rather than just reproduce material. For example, don’t play your favorite K-pop song in the background of a tutorial. Instead, critically engage with the material by analyzing the musicality of your favorite K-pop song, alternatively playing a few bars of music and offering your commentary.
- The nature of the copyrighted work: Is your referenced copyrighted work published or unpublished? A creative work of fiction or all about the facts? This factor generally provides more protection for unpublished creative works, like unpublished drafts of the next Harry Potter, than it would for published factional works, such as published daily weather reports.
- The amount or substantiality of the portion used: This is not an exact science and depends on many factors. Remember to use as little as possible of the copyrighted work, use only what you really need to make your point, and don’t give away any plot twists or other major elements of the work. Professional movie reviews are a good example to follow — criticize but no spoilers.
- The effect of the use on the potential market for or the value of the work: Think about the purpose of the works and if your (non-profit educational) work will be competition for the (commercial) copyrighted work. Your work isn’t competition if you ruin a good K-pop song with your constant interruptions and opinions. But if you screencast to an uninterrupted K-pop, then you have provided a free listening spot for fans and cut into the band’s ability to make money.
Bottom line: Fair use enables limited use of copyrighted material for educational purposes. Creators must consider all four factors of fair use when evaluating whether their criticism or commentary of copyrighted materials is legal. Use Columbia University Libraries’ fair use checklist or the University of Stanford Libraries’ Fair Use Evaluator Tool to check yourself.
Copyright and you
You are asked as a student at KU to regularly create original works for your class assignments. As a student and creator at KU, you have the right to retain your copyrights. As mentioned above, U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, Sec. 106) provides copyright protection for any work by an author, including students’ papers and/or projects. The KU Intellectual Property Policy reinforces your copyrights as well. “The ownership of student works submitted in fulfillment of academic requirements shall be with the Creator(s)” except under certain circumstances, the policy states. This means you have the right to stipulate if or how your work could be used or shared by anyone else. While your professor still has the right to grade your assignment, they cannot share your work without your express permission.
When you start a job, you should discuss copyright with your employer. Chances are that your work will be considered a work-for-hire and your employer will own the copyright as a condition of your employment.
For a deeper dive into the world of copyright and fair use, review the University of Stanford Libraries’ guides and tutorials.
Open licensing
The term open is really broad. If a work is open, then anyone can freely access the information and use it without the author’s permission. This means there aren’t any paywalls and you can freely access the information. This does not necessarily mean, though, that you no longer have to cite the information. In most cases, you still have to give credit where credit is due. To help you better understand, let’s delve a bit deeper into two categories of open: public domain or openly licensed.
Public Domain
The public domain is not a specific place, as the U.S. Copyright Office likes to remind us. Rather, the name reflects the owners of the work: The public. This means that public domain work is not the property of a single person but of everyone because it is not under copyright.
A work becomes public domain in three ways. First, the copyright on the work may have expired. Generally speaking, copyright is granted for the life of the author plus 70 years. But if a work was made for hire, or if its author is anonymous, the copyright lasts 95 years. So on Jan.1, 2020, works published in this way on or before 1925 are in the public domain. There are several exceptions and to these general rules. They are all discussed in this guide from the U.S. Copyright Office.
You can use this interactive copyright slider to determine if a work you’re considering is public domain.
Second, a work may be born as a public domain work. The classic example of this is federal government information. Anything that the U.S. government produces that is not classified is published or contracted by the Government Publishing Office and shared either in print through federal depository libraries (the University of Kansas is one!) or, increasingly, digitally. Federal government information is largely open because transparency and an informed citizenry encourages a flourishing free democratic society.
The third way is if a creator intentionally places a work in the public domain. As will be further discussed below, a creator may place a CC0 license or some other type license that clearly communicates the author relinquishes their copyrights to the public.
Open Access
Another example of how something may be born open is if it is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC) license. This does not mean that the creative work is not copyrighted. But this type of license grants creators and consumers some workarounds to make the work more accessible. CC licensing allows creators to retain the rights to their work, and allows others to copy, distribute, edit, reuse, and remix it without needing to get permission or paying for it.
You can recognize CC materials by the symbol:
There are four CC terms (below) that can be combined in six different ways to dictate how an open work can be used. You will usually see one or more of these symbols that signify the terms appearing next to the CC license symbol:
- BY or attribution means you want to get credit for your original work. To comply with the BY term, someone must attribute your work or cite you or note when they’ve adapted your work.
- NC or noncommercial dictates that others cannot commercialize or profit from your work. So a commercial publisher cannot take publish “Sharing Student Work at KU” to make money because it is licensed CC BY NC. The noncommercial term does not prevent you from profiting financially from your work.
- SA or share alike means if you remix or reuse my work, you have to license your work under the same license as mine.
- ND or no derivatives prevents anyone from adapting or remixing your work because you like your work just as it is and couldn’t imagine anyone else would feel differently.
All of these terms can be combined in a variety of different ways to ensure that your work is accessible but being used in ways you think is best. Here are a the six CC license types with the various combinations of terms:
Sidenote: CC0 places a work in the public domain. It is the least restrictive of all licenses and allows authors to wave all of their rights.
CC and You
As a creator of information you have the right to apply a CC license to your work. Doing so allows you to retain your copyright while signaling to others that they may reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute your work as they wish. If you would like to publish your work anonymously, you could apply a CC0 license. You can read David Wiley’s thoughts about the benefits of sharing and learning from student work.
If you wish to publish anonymously, you may publish CC0 and waive all of your author’s rights. If you wish to retain your rights and implement CC terms of use, then you could publish under CC BY Anonymous.
For guidelines on how to write CC attributions, see the CC best practices guide.
Recap: Copyright v. CC
Watch the below tutorial to recap the differences between copyright and CC licenses.
Your educational Privacy and copyrights
As a student, your copyrightable class work has an extra layer of protection. FERPA (Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act, 34 CFR Part 99) prevents an institution from disclosing or publishing student work without prior written consent. That is, the same law that mandates your grades are private, also states that you have that right to learn in private. In short, your professor cannot share your unpublished coursework with others without your permission because it would violate your educational privacy rights and copyrights.
The big takeaway
At KU you retain the copyright to any work you have created for class, according to the university’s copyright policy. As a creator of copyrightable material, you are responsible for respecting the copyrights of other creators. Additionally, your educational privacy is protected by FERPA. If your instructor invites you to share your coursework publicly, then your instructor should ask for your written consent.
In the written consent, you can agree to share your work and whether you will keep a copyright or apply a CC license to your work. Remember, the CC license allows you to retain your copyright. It also allows you to signal to others whether they may freely retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute your work while giving you credit. Your grade will not be impacted by your decision to not share your work. If you have any concerns about sharing your work, please reach out to your professor.
