Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that offers copyright licenses to allow sharing and use of creative work. They provide standardized click-through licenses that are free to use. Their licenses allow creators to choose various levels of copyright protection for their work from full copyright to public domain. Creative Commons licenses help express a preference for sharing creative works while still providing attribution to the original creators. Copyright law protects the expression of ideas but not the underlying ideas or facts themselves. Certain uses of copyrighted material may be allowed, such as incidental inclusion in another work. Open access policies aim to provide unrestricted access to scholarly works. Free and open source software licenses also govern how software and content can be shared and modified.

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Darius Whelan UCC
May 2014
Further Aspects of Copyright
Law for Digital Teaching and
Learning

2. What is Creative Commons?
• Non-profit corporation based in California
• Founded on notion that some people may not want to exercise all of
the intellectual property rights the law affords them.
• Believes there is an unmet demand for an easy way to tell the world
"Some rights reserved" or even "No rights reserved."
• Many people want to share their work - and the power to reuse,
modify, and distribute their work - with others on generous terms.
• Creative Commons intends to help people express this preference for
sharing by offering the world a set of licenses on its site, at no
charge.
• UCC Law Faculty is Irish Partner
• Website: www.creativecommonsireland.org
• Focus of Creative Commons is on content (e.g. video, music, written
material) rather than software 2

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This
means
“More
Actions”

10. • To download picture, select … [More Actions]
• Download/ All Sizes
• Choose the size you want and then choose
‘download’
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11. Other sites with Creative Commons material
• YouTube
• Google Advanced Search – see ‘usage
rights’ section
• Google Images Advanced Search
• Europeana
• search.creativecommons.org
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12. Important to attribute work
• Samples from Slideshare
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photo CC BY martinak15 from Flickr

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15. The idea/expression dichotomy
• Copyright extends to expression of ideas not
the ideas themselves
• S.17(3) Copyright protection shall not extend
to the ideas and principles which underlie any
element of a work, procedures, methods of
operation or mathematical concepts ….
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16. • Principles are not copyright
• US case-law: facts are not copyright (Feist
case)
• E.g. Historical facts are not copyright
• Even a historical theory is not copyright if it is
presented as a fact
• U.S. merger doctrine: When a limited set of
words is needed to express an idea, anyone is
free to use the set of words.
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17. Incidental inclusion
• 52.—(1) The copyright in a work is not
infringed by its inclusion in an incidental
manner in another work.
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18. Other areas of law
• Trademarks
• Patents
• Data Protection
• Privacy
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19. Open Access Publishing
• Providing unrestricted access to scholarly
work
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Green – Author publishes in journal (which might not
be open access) and self-archives elsewhere, e.g.
CORA
Gold: Author publishes in open access journal
- Not possible if journal does not permit

20. • Irish Research Council draft Open Access
Policy
– http://research.ie/aboutus/open-access
• Research Councils UK Open Access Policy
– www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx
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21. Free and Open Source Licences
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• See www.oss-watch.ac.uk
• Open Source Software
– Source code is viewable to all
– Software may be distributed and changed
– E.g. Mozilla Firefox
• Free Software
– People are free to run program for any purpose, study
how program works, change it, redistribute copies,
improve it, release improvements to the public
– E.g. GNU General Public Licence, Apache Licence

22. • Permissive licences - do not seek to control how
modified code is licensed. Modified code can
form basis of closed source product
• Copyleft licences - offer right to distribute copies
and modified versions of work and require same
rights be preserved in modified versions of the
work
– Strong copyleft: If modified code is produced, the
software as a whole must be distributed under
original licence
– Weak copyleft: If modified code is produced, some
parts of the software must be distributed under
original licence while other parts may be distributed
under other licences
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23. • Free Culture Licences
– Principles of free software applied to content
– Include CC BY and CC BY SA
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24. • If using free / open source software, comply
with terms of licence
• E.g. if distributing or adapting software, give
credit to original authors of software
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26. Sources to consult
• Robert Clark, Shane Smyth and Niamh Hall,
Intellectual Property Law in Ireland, 3rd ed. (2010)
• JISC: Legal Guidance for ICT Use in Education,
Research and External Engagement
– www.jisclegal.ac.uk
• Jane Secker, Copyright and e-Learning: A Guide for
Practitioners (London: Facet Publishing, 2010)
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Photo CC BY dbrekke from Flickr