4 Teaching Copyright and Open Practices to Art Students
How This Section Reimagines Approaches to Teaching Copyright and Open Practices to Art Students
In addition to my concern that open work often expects faculty to do this work without or with limited time, funding, and other support, I am particularly concerned with how working open affects arts faculty. Those working in the creative industries are more frequently plagued by being asked to work for reduced pay, no pay, or (blech) for exposure. As a frequent lurker of the subreddit r/ChoosingBeggars, I’m appalled at how too many people and businesses undervalue and exploit artists.
With that said, faculty and students should both be aware of the various ways in which one can work openly. Moreover, students need to be taught about their intellectual property rights as creators, as well as how to legally and ethically use others’ works. While I clearly have opinions on working free of charge “for exposure” for social media influencers, working openly can be a strategy to share one’s work. Creative Commons attribution requires those who use these openly licensed works to give you credit and help you market yourself.
Many OER works emphasize copyright, intellectual property, and open licenses for faculty. I’ve chosen to revise the Faculty OER Toolkit by Shannon Moist in this example to speak to a student audience in the United States. This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution license, which specifically allows for adaptations, in which we can “remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.”
The majority of the text below is directly copied from the section “3.1 Demand, Supply, and Equilibrium in Markets for Goods and Services.”
The Revised OER for Student Copyright & Open Licenses
8 Copyright
Copyright definition
In Canada, copyright is defined as “sole right to produce or reproduce a work or a substantial part of it in any form” and it “provides protection for literary, artistic, dramatic or musical works (including computer programs) and other subject-matter known as performer’s performances, sound recordings and communication signals.”
In the United States, copyright is defined as “a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. In copyright law, there are a lot of different types of works, including paintings, photographs, illustrations, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, books, poems, blog posts, movies, architectural works, plays, and so much more!”
Moreover, for the most part, everyone is a copyright owner! At the moment of creation of an original work, you are the author and owner of that work and you have inherit copyright–with some exceptions. If working for a company, organization, or individual through “works made for hire,” you would not be the copyright holder but rather your employer would retain copyright. When contracting with employers, be sure to understand what your copyright status will be once you complete the job.
For more information about copyright, please contact your institution’s Copyright Office or Copyright Librarian.
For specific questions about copyright, please contact the ELAC library at library@elac.edu.
Copyright and Creative Commons
Using a Creative Commons license does not negate copyright – it modifies the terms of copyright, allowing others to use a work with attribution, that is, while recognizing the intellectual property of the copyright holder(s). As Creative Commons states, “CC licenses are copyright licenses, and depend on the existence of copyright to work. CC licenses are legal tools that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights.”
tl;dr: When using Creative Commons licenses, you still retain copyright! It just means that you are opening up some permissions to allow others to use your work in certain ways (which we’ll get into next).
The video below discusses how Creative Commons licenses allow creators to modify copyright terms.
9 Creative Commons Licensing
Choose a license
If you are adapting an existing open textbook, the adaptations you make will be released with whatever open license you choose, while the rest of the book will be released under the license of the original book. In other words, you need to respect the license of the original work. You cannot license what you do not create. You can only attach a CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution), or other open license to the parts of the book that you have created and are new.
However, there is a “catch.” If the textbook you are adapting has a Share-Alike condition (CC BY-SA 4.0) stipulated, then you must release the entire book using the same license as the original book.
If you are creating an original work, you can choose whatever license–if any–you like. Those who choose to use your work must abide by whatever open license conditions you choose.
Attribution: CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
tl;dr: People can pretty much use your work however they want as long as they give you credit.
Attribution-ShareAlike: CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
tl;dr: People can still pretty much use your work however they want as long as they give you credit AND their derivative work needs to use the same license as you.
Example: You share a work as CC BY, so all derivative works need to also be licensed CC BY. Alternatively, if you licensed your work under CC BY-SA, all derivative works need to be licensed as CC BY-SA. And so on.
Attribution-NoDerivs: CC BY-ND
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
tl;dr: People can use this work as long as they give you credit, but they can’t make any changes or modifications to the original work, they can only use it as is.
Example: You produce a photograph but you only want others to use it unaltered (e.g. no color adjustments, no mashups, etc.) The integrity of the original work is important to you.
Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
tl;dr: People can pretty much use your work however they want as long as they give you credit BUT ONLY non-commercially.
Example: Your photograph can be used on a professor’s syllabus with credit/attribution, but it cannot be used in a published book under this license. If someone wanted to publish your photograph in a book, they would have to request permission to you as the copyright holder.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
tl;dr: Same as CC BY-NC (can’t be used commercially) but ALSO their derivative work needs to use the same license as you.
Example: Your photograph can be used on a professor’s syllabus with credit/attribution AND the professor needs to license their syllabus under the same CC BY-NC-SA license.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
tl;dr: Same as CC BY-ND but also can’t be used commercially.
Example: You produce a photograph but you only want others to use it unaltered (e.g. no color adjustments, no mashups, etc.) The integrity of the original work is important to you. But also, the unaltered photograph can’t be used commercially. If someone wanted to publish your photograph in a book, they would have to request permission to you as the copyright holder.
Attributions
This chapter “Teaching Copyright and Open Practices to Art Students” is a combined adaptation of the chapters “Copyright” and “Creative Commons Licensing” in “Faculty OER Toolkit” by Shannon Moist, used under a CC BY 4.0 license.
The Creative Commons license definitions and images listed on this page have been copied from Creative Commons and are used under a CC BY 4.0 license.
