Know Your Copy Rights:
Asking the Rights Questions
Barbara DeFelice
Director, Digital Resources and
Scholarly Communications Programs
Dartmouth College Library
Ethics Institute Train the Trainer
February 25th, 2013
Copyright © the Trustees of Dartmouth College
What are Copy Rights?
Who Owns Them?
For How Long?
When Do I Need to Get Permission to
Use Copyrighted Work?
What are Copy Rights?
Copyright Law provides for a collection of
rights that exist upon creation of a work
in a tangible medium, which can be
transferred or waived in whole or in part.
These include:



Distribute the work: publish, give away,
sell
Make copies, reformat, create derivative
works
Perform, display, and broadcast publicly
"To promote the progress of science and
useful arts, by securing for limited times
to authors and inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writings and
discoveries." U.S. Constitution Article I,
Section 8, Clause 8; 1787
(for 14 years after publication under the
first copyright law of 1790)
Who Owns Copy Rights?
Dartmouth Copyright Ownership Policy
Scholarly and creative works of
Dartmouth faculty, students and staff are
owned by the author or creator with
these exceptions:
•Assigned
•Outside
Tasks
Agreements (OSP handles these)
•Special
Circumstances (shared copyright may
be appropriate)
•Patentable
Works (for dissertations, can restrict
the distribution date)


“Did the use ”transform” the material ….by
using it for a… different purpose from that
of the original?” * Did the use “transform”
the material by combining it with other
materials to make a completely different
work with a different purpose?”
“Was the amount and nature of the material
taken appropriate ….. in light of the nature
of the work and of its use?”*
*From the introductory material in the “Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use for….”

Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use for..
◦ 8 communities of practice now have these
◦ Documentary Film Makers, Poetry, Libraries, Open
Educational Resources etc.
◦ Codify community practices in the context of the
benefits accrued to society of accomplishing the
intended work
◦ None have been challenged
◦ Creative, scholarly and educational endeavors
supported
a page or two from another person’s published
journal article, book or report
 a section of a dissertation on my topic
 an image that I found on the Web
 a data set I obtained using DataThief or other
such program
 this excellent graph that I found in another
journal article
 lines from a poem
 art image from ArtSTOR or other proprietary
collection
 portions (graph, text, image) of my already
published work in my thesis or dissertation




a data set I obtained using DataThief or
other such program
this excellent graph that I found in a
journal article (for example from Nature or
from an IEEE journal)
data I found using a source like
Knovel.com (digital handbooks with
downloadable data sets)
Figure 1.a. from: Interannual extremes in the rate of rise of atmospheric carbon
dioxide since 1980 by C. D. Keeling, T. P. Whorf, M. Wahlen, J. van der Plichtt
Nature 375, 666-670 (22 June 1995)
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995, Nature Publishing Group
Get permission to use this via the RightsLink Nature uses.
Free of charge for use in a dissertation; for classroom use cost is $34.50
Creative
Commons
Attribution
Share Alike
License
Copyrighted
BUT no
permission
needed!
Government information is in the Public Domain so NO permission needed!
Example of an
interactive Graph
Digitizer from
Knovel. “In Knovel's
version, each of the
design and
mechanical property
data tables is
interactive. Knovel
has digitally
calibrated hundreds
of graphs, such as
the effect of
temperature on
various physical
properties and
stress-strain
curves.”
Military Handbook - MIL-HDBK-5H: Metallic Materials and Elements for Aerospace Vehicle
Structures (Knovel Interactive Edition)
Publisher: U.S. Department of Defense Copyright / Pub. Date:
N/A
Get permission from Knovel to use in a publication.
Stakeholders: Copyright owner-the publisher; the authors of
the paper, the data collectors and chart creators
Pertinent copyright law: Who owns the rights to the article?
To the image? To the graph?
IF the graph you want is the key point of the article, even if
it’s a small portion, get permission.
Look at the two websites; one specifically states that it is
available to use under a Creative Commons license and
the other is a U.S. Federal government website and
therefore in the public domain. So these can be used with
attribution but do not require permission.
6 Creative Commons License Combinations
Creative Commons Search
Attribution (by) alone provides for all kinds of uses,
including derivative works.
Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) provides
for building upon and remixing but NOT for
commercial purposes
Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) allows building upon and
remixing the work, even for commercial purposes. The users
must license their work as Share Alike also.
Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)
Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives
(by-nc-nd) is most restrictive
Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike
(by-nc-sa) provides for building upon and
remixing but NOT for commercial purposes
Stakeholders: Who are they in this case? Do the copyright
owners-the publisher; the authors of the paper-own the
data? What about the data collectors?
Pertinent copyright law: Is it possible to copyright data?
Who owns the rights to the data itself? Is using a
program to extract data from a print graph any different
than copying the data from the graph by hand into a
spreadsheet for example?
A graph, an image or some text from my already
published journal article, poem, story or book.
Remember that contract you signed?
Get permission IF:
 You signed away ALL your rights to the
publisher
 What you want to do is NOT in the rights you
retained
 You cannot make a Fair Use case

Publisher Policies on ”Author’s Pages”
 Links to copyright terms “Copyright Policy”
 How to get Permissions under “Rights &
Permissions”
Aggregated Publisher Copyright Policies &
Self-Archiving Information
SHERPA RoMEO
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

Stakeholders: Copyright owner-the publisher in this case;
the authors of the paper who want to reuse the material
Pertinent copyright law: Who owns the rights to the article?
Which rights? Exclusive rights?
Since he or she does not own any rights to the article due to
signing the publication contract which involves
transferring all copy rights to the publisher, he or she
needs to get the publisher’s permission to use his or her
work in his or her dissertation or thesis OR he or she
needs to greatly rework it so it is not the same material.
Stakeholders: Student, faculty advisor, the institution
because the institution has to follow the NIH mandate.
Pertinent copyright law: Who owns the rights to the article
used in the dissertation? Which rights? Exclusive rights?
Who owns the right to the dissertation?
She can use the Dartmouth Publication Amendment to retain
the rights she wants.
She needs to find the owner of the image to get permission
or not use it. She must of course cite and attribute
carefully. Even though UMI is making a digital copy of her
dissertation and can sell copies of it, UMI has a NONexclusive commercial license, so that fact does not keep
her from being able to publish this work in a journal.


Review your contracts carefully and ask for
help in determining what rights you will
retain or want to retain
Consider: what can you do with your
material if you transfer all your copyrights
to the publisher?

Fair Use Checklist from Columbia

U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use
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
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Copyright and Fair Use-list of cases from Stanford
University Library
ARL Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic
and Research Libraries
Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use: Poetry, Media
Literacy, Online Video
Copy Rights and Author Rights
Barbara DeFelice, Eliz Kirk & Jennifer Taxman
Dartmouth Library Copyright Guidelines and
Policies
UMI Resources and Guidelines for Dartmouth
College