This document discusses copyright, open licensing, and Creative Commons licenses. It explains that copyright automatically grants authors exclusive rights over reproduction and distribution of their works. Creative Commons licenses provide alternatives to traditional "all rights reserved" copyright by allowing some reuse and modification of content through open licenses like CC-BY. The advantages include enabling legal sharing, remixing and improving of works online. The document provides an overview of Creative Commons licenses and how they can be applied through human-readable and legal text markings.

1. COPYRIGHT, OPEN LICENSING &
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES
Meredith Jacob
Ethan Senack
Except where noted, all slides licensed CC-BY
4.0 by Creative Commons United States

2. Copyright law grants to the author (or copyright
owner) the exclusive right to: reproduce, make
derivatives of, sell, distribute to the public,
perform or display publicly, the copyrighted
work, subject to fair use and other limitations
and exceptions to copyright law. Copyright
owners may assign all the rights in their
copyright, or give limited licenses that allow
others to make specific use of their works.
WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?

3. Copyright law applies to intellectual property
that are “original works of authorship.” Common
types of works protected by copyright include
literary, artistic, and musical works. Copyright is
automatic, so it applies as soon as the work
has been created. Unless otherwise granted,
copyright protection in the United States lasts
for the life of the author plus 70 years or 100
years for an institutional author. After this time
period has expired, works fall into the public
domain and are free from copyright restrictions.
WHAT DOES COPYRIGHT
PROTECT?

4. There are a number of exceptions and limitations to
copyright. For example, works produced by federal
employees in the course of their employment are in
the public domain in the United States. Functional
concepts, names, and logos are typically covered by
patent or trademark law, if protected at all, rather
than copyright. Exceptions in copyright law permit
some uses of copyrighted works for libraries, public
broadcasters, and around efforts to make works
more accessible to those with disabilities. Copyright
protects the specific expression of a work - the
words - but not the underlying idea.
ARE THERE LIMITS TO WHAT
COPYRIGHT PROTECTS?

5. Fair use a provision of copyright law that allows
the use of a copyrighted work without
permission from the copyright holder under
specific circumstances. News reporting,
teaching, and parody are all examples of
activities that could qualify as fair use. Fair use
is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and
considers the purpose of the use, how much of
the original work is used, and how it impacts
the market for the original work.
WHAT ABOUT FAIR USE?

6. • Works within the copyright system
• Author still holds copyright to the work
• Traditional licenses are one to one
(negotiated)
• Open licenses like the Creative Commons
licenses are one to the public/one to many
WHAT IS AN OPEN LICENSE?

7. Advantages
• Takes advantage digital distribution and
authorship
• Ability to improve, remix, and translate
• Makes informal reuse formally permissible
(and possible on the open internet)
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF
AN OPEN LICENSE?

8. Copyright is the default
• books, assessments, training materials,
survey instruments, articles, blogs,
photographs, videos, are all automatically
protected by copyright
• The copyright owner automatically has the
exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute,
publicly perform, publicly display or adapt
the work
WHAT IS OUR STARTING
POINT?

9. • Clearly communicates to the public that
the resource is free to reuse
• Grants the public a license to access,
reproduce, publicly perform, publicly
display, adapt, distribute, and otherwise
use for any purposes
• provided that the licensee gives attribution
to the designated authors of the
intellectual property.
WHAT DOES A CREATIVE
COMMONS LICENSE DO?

10. WHY AN OPEN LICENSE?

11. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
THE CC LICENSE MARK AND LINK

12. THE HUMAN READABLE VERSION

13. THE LEGAL TEXT

14. The CCSSO policy uses the CC-BY licenses, but
there are six types of CC licenses in use
TYPES OF CC LICENSES

15. • 109 Districts
• 20 states
#GO OPEN

16. openupresources.org

18. WA State and K-12 Districts together
spend $130M/yearon textbooks.
The results are in:
• Books are (on average) 7-10 years out of date
• Paper only / no digital versions
• Students can’t write / highlight in books
• Students can’t keep books at end of year
• All rights reserved… teachers can’t update
• Parents often pay for lost paper books

19. MARKING YOUR WORK
© 2013 by CCSSO. Operational Best
Practices for Statewide Large-Scale Assessment Programs
2013 Edition is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 it is available at
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Operational_
Best_Practices_for_Statewide_Large-
Scale_Assessment_Programs.html

20. MARKING YOUR WORK
© 2013 by CCSSO. Operational Best
Practices for Statewide Large-Scale Assessment Programs
2013 Edition is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 it is available at
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Operational_
Best_Practices_for_Statewide_Large-
Scale_Assessment_Programs.html
Copyright Notice (and Author)

21. MARKING YOUR WORK
© 2013 by CCSSO. Operational Best
Practices for Statewide Large-Scale Assessment Programs
2013 Edition is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 it is available at
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Operational_
Best_Practices_for_Statewide_Large-
Scale_Assessment_Programs.html
Title of the Work

22. MARKING YOUR WORK
© 2013 by CCSSO. Operational Best
Practices for Statewide Large-Scale Assessment Programs
2013 Edition is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 it is available at
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Operational_
Best_Practices_for_Statewide_Large-
Scale_Assessment_Programs.html
Name of the CC license used and link to the license text

23. MARKING YOUR WORK
© 2013 by CCSSO. Operational Best
Practices for Statewide Large-Scale Assessment Programs
2013 Edition is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 it is available at
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Operational_
Best_Practices_for_Statewide_Large-Scale
_Assessment_Programs.html
[Optional – link to the digital version of the document]

24. Open Educational Resources and Creative
Commons Licenses by Meredith Jacob,
slideshare.net/Meredith Jacob under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(CC-BY)
ATTRIBUTION EXAMPLE

25. • What rights does the author retain?
• Can content still be commercialized?
• What about building new materials on
openly licensed content?
• What about materials that contain or builds
on existing copyrighted content?
– Licensed photos or passages
– Combination with proprietary software
QUESTIONS ABOUT
IMPLEMENTATION - COPYRIGHT

26. • creativecommonsusa.org
• creativecommons.org
• mjacob@wcl.american.edu
• slideshare.net/MeredithJacob
OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN MORE