THE COPYRIGHT GLOSSARY
Copyleft
—A play on the word “copyright,” copyleft involves using
copyright law to remove restrictions on nonauthors’ distribution of
copies and modified versions of a work. Under copyleft, an author
retains copyright, but grants a nonexclusive license to anyone to
distribute, and often modify, the work. Copyleft licenses require that
any derivative works be distributed under the same terms, with the
original copyright notices maintained.
Creative Commons licenses
—These ready­made content
licenses assign “baseline rights” that are less restricting than
standard international copyright terms, such as the right to
distribute the copyrighted work worldwide, without changes, free of
charge. Content creators use the licenses to indicate which rights they
reserve and which they waive for subsequent users. These can be
applied to any work under copyright, including books, music, articles,
images, movies, plays, blogs, and websites. The six most common
types of license are:
• All works under this
Creative Commons Attribution (BY):
license are protected by copyright law and must be attributed as
specified by the author or licensor (but not in a way that implies
they endorse you or your use of their work). Attribution must be
given to “the best of [one’s] ability using the information available.”
• Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (BY-ND):
As Attribution, but only verbatim copies of this work may be
made, distributed, displayed, and performed—not derivative
works based upon it. For details, see
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nd/3.0/.
• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
(BY-NC):
As Attribution, plus this work can be copied, distributed,
displayed, and performed—along with derivative works based upon
it—but only for noncommercial purposes. For details, see
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc/3.0/.
• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives
As Attribution, but only verbatim
(BY-NC-ND):
copies of this work may be made, distributed, displayed, and
performed—not derivative works based upon it. Copies may only
be used for noncommercial purposes. For details, see
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­nd/3.0/.
• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA):
As Attribution, but if you alter, transform, or build upon this work,
you can distribute the result only under the same or a similar
license to this one.
For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­sa/3.0/.
• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike
As Attribution, plus this work may be
(BY-NC-SA):
copied, distributed, displayed, and performed—along with
derivative works based upon it—but only for noncommercial
purposes. If the work is altered, transformed, or built upon, you
may distribute the result only under the same or a similar license to
this one. For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­
nc­sa/3.0/.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA)—Enacted in
October 1998 and implementing many provisions of the World
Intellectual Property Organization’s Copyright and Phonogram
Treaties, DMCA criminalized attempts to bypass copyright, digital
rights management, or access­control technologies. Exemptions
added in 2010 provide protections for fair use in some circumstances.
The full text of the original DMCA is available at
www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf.
—Under U.S. copyright law, this exception allows limited
Fair use
citation or incorporation of copyrighted material without the user
obtaining permission from the author or rights holder. News reporting,
research, criticism, teaching, and scholarship are areas where fair use
of copyrighted material can be made, depending on circumstances.
For more detail on what legally constitutes fair use, see Circular 21,
Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians, from
the U.S. Copyright Office (www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf).
First-sale doctrine
—This exception to copyright generally allows
anyone who purchases an authorized, legal copy of a protected work
to resell, lend, or give away that copy. When a print book is sold or
given away, it’s no longer in the possession of the original owner, but
with e­books it’s hard to confirm deletion on the original device, which
complicates the potential for a used e­book market.
—This is a name for the model under which a work is
Freemium
available digitally for free and in a print­on­demand format for cost.
—Open­access works are protected by copyright law,
Open access
but made available with explicit permission of the copyright holder.
Free availability and unrestricted use.
Open educational resources
(OER)—Defined by The William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation as resources “that reside in the public
domain or have been released under an intellectual­property
license that permits their free use and repurposing by others,” OER
can include full courses, course materials, textbooks, modules, tests
and quizzes, streaming videos, software. —While often used interchangeably with “open access”
Open source
or “open content” in discussions and the media, open source is
actually a software term referring to nonproprietary source code for a
platform or application.
—These are books in copyright whose rights owners
Orphan works
are unknown, meaning there’s no one to give permission for digital
use.
—For works protected by copyright
Protected by copyright law
law, no reproduction or distribution is allowed without the copyright
holder’s permission. The law does include some exceptions, including
fair use where applicable and access for users with print disabilities. —Works in the public domain aren’t subject to
Public domain
copyright because their original copyright expired or was never
established. In the U.S., all works published before 1923 are
public domain, while those published from 1923­1963 entered
public domain 28 years after publication unless their copyright
was renewed. Users can legally copy, manipulate, and redistribute all
or part of a public­domain work. Remember that a work in the public
domain in the U.S. may not be in the public domain in other countries. —Under this legal standard, there’s no requirement
Strict liability
to prove negligence, fault, or intention. That means a college store can
be found liable for unknowingly copying or selling works where
required permission wasn’t obtained. In short, ignorance is no excuse.
Adapted from The College Store magazine (January/February 2016). © National Association of College Stores