The latest copyright clearance query I have had is about ‘screen-grabs’ from browsers and software programs.

Do they need to be cleared?

Here are three examples:

Showing a Powerpoint Slide with AnalySeries Software

Showing a Powerpoint Slide with AnalySeries Software

Screen Grab from Browser showing data from ODP site

The first thing to realise is that the ‘method’ used to publish these originals does not make any difference to their ownership.  The fact that the data is published on a ‘web-site’ doesn’t give any further rights to use them.

So there being ‘screen-grabs’ is neither here nor there.

Therefore the quick answer must be ‘yes’ they do need to be cleared, however in this case there may be other reasons why you can go ahead and use them without clearance:

Graphs & Tables of Data:

First, the graphs have all come from American state-funded organisations and we know that their material has all been released into the ‘public domain’ in the US,  so we can use those anyway… If the original data had belonged to the OS or BGS, then it most probably would of been protected by ‘database rights’ in the UK, so we would have had to ask the owner for permission.

Software Screen-grabs:

Although in strict legal terms, there could be some copyright held within the program design, in reality they can be considered very low-risk.  It is normal for any product from software to be the copyright of the user of the software, not the software-maker (if you make an image in Photoshop, it is your copyright – not Adobes).  So you would not need to contact the software producer, just the user who made the screengrab which is normally much easier.

Basically:

Diagrams and Graphs do need to be cleared, even if taken from a screen-grab, although there may be some ways around this, such as re-presenting the data in another form.  Screen-grabs of software are the copyright of the user who made the screen grab not the software producer.

A while ago I was talking with Tim Denning at Keele University about the lack of clarity in the approach many Universities have to IPR in the widest context.  Tim is working on MedDev, another project in the OER Programme and they intend to grab this bull by the horns and undertake a survey of their partners to try and find out a bit more about university institutional IPR policy.

It would be great to extend this survey as wide as possible so I would encourage all of you to get in touch with Tim or Adrian on oer@keele.ac.uk and I am sure they will be delighted to send you the details of how to fill out the survey.

These surveys always take a little time to fill out, but it should be worth the effort as they promise to share the results with all those who have filled it out and I think it will make very interesting reading.

In our research on the clearance of  copyright on maps and map-data, we were advised to talk to Dr Mike Smith at Kingston who knows a lot more on the subject than I do!  See his bio-page at:  http://www.kingston.ac.uk/gge/staff/smith.htm

I explained how we might want to use some maps and our possible need to re-purpose some maps and map-data.

This was his answer:

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Maps are a difficult area at the moment and doubly-so in the UK. The GRADE project that Edina completed reported upon many of these issues within the UK context http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitalrepositories2005/grade.aspx

its worth reading at least the executive summary. Some further thoughts for you:

-the GRADE report argues that (“paper”) maps are “drawings” and so copyright, but raw digital data (not including scans) are “data” so come under database right. Its an opinion that has not been challenged in court!

-different countries have different regulations. Ireland, Canada and the US, for example, are very open about distribution. Indeed federal data in the US is in the public domain

-not so in the UK. Please read some posts I have written on JISC licensing (distributed via EDINA) of OS data:

http://journalofmaps.com/about.php?helpfile=smartyOS.html

http://www.journalofmaps.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/GIS/os_he_license.html

-in short, you will almost certainly NOT be allowed to publish/distribute anything that in any remote way contains OS data *unless* the recipient has licensed OS data. This was the rationale behind setting up the GRADE repository (now Share-Geo) as it includes controls on access

-the BIG sticking point is the area of derived data. Anything that incorporates OS data in any form, no matter how minor, potentially is copyright to them, although their Research and Innovation department can clarify on a case by case basis. However the recommendation would be NOT to use OS data.

-all in all its not really good news. I would be wary about redrafting anything unless you can be positively sure copyright has been covered.

Feel free to get back in touch if you have any further queries.

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Well, I have to admit this is not a very rosy picture and we need to do some more thinking and I suspect a lot of talking to try and get to a point where we can use this material in our OER.

Thoughts – please – either here or on the Forum:

I have just uploaded a new version of the C-change Copyright Clearance Schema, with a new worksheet which provides a working method to collate the copyright clearance for each item of OER in preparation.

This new worksheet was developed by University of Southampton with a little more attention from myself.  It might not be quite there yet, but it is certainly a useful addition to our toolbox.

You can download it from the ‘Documents’ section or directly from:  c-change_copyright_clearance_schema_2a

With information now coming in from the C-change partners it has been possible to update the draft list of GEES Teaching Resources.  It is hoped that as this list grows we will be able to get some insight into where most of the items are coming from that need to be cleared and also what kind of reaction we are getting from the publishers and holders of other material that we wish to use.

The new updated list is on the documents page and available here: gees_teaching_resources_2c

We know that one of the biggest challenges that faces our partners is the amount of diagrams and figures that are used in our teaching materials. In many cases these diagrams have been copied out of research papers and journal articles that of course belong to the Publishing House.  This means that we are going to have to contact the Publisher and ask them for permission to use the materials  in the C-change OER with a CC license.

The first problem can be simply finding out how to contact the publisher….but fear not – there is an easy way.
Simply visit the SHERPA website at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ where the RoMEO project has recorded almost all publishers in an online database.  The database also gives a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher’s copyright transfer agreement.

All in all a very useful resource.

This was a very useful session that gave a good overview of  IPR and copyright and I recommend it to anyone who wants to catch up on the basics of the law.

Even better, it is still available from JISC Legal here.

For myself, I now feel like I have a pretty good idea of the basics of IPR law, but still feel there is a need for more research around some of the more practical elements of the task of copyright clearance.  In particular the nitty-gritty or actually undertaking the process of copyright clearance.

We are working it out for ourselves…as we go…but it would be nice to hear a bit more from others in the same position.

We have now had the chance to meet with most of the C-change partners and look at the proposed materials for release to OER and can see where some of the challenges lie.

There appear to be 3 main types of item that will need clearance:

Images

The biggest challenge is dealing with the liberal use of images in our materials.  Some will be easy, as they were made by staff or ex-staff (ex-students work will most probably also be considered low-risk). For other images we won’t be able to easily provide an author or established copyright licence. Indeed, we know that some may well of been lifted without permission or acknowledgement from the web. With all these images, it will be necessary to either find their author and ask for permission or endeavour to find replacement images from known copyright cleared  sources such as Flickr – Creative  Commons or indeed the authors own images.  In some cases, if it is impossible to find the author and the image is considered ‘low-risk’ it may be considered a ‘reasonable risk’ to go ahead and use some of these images anyway, but full efforts must be taken to show due-diligence before this decision can be taken.

Diagrams, Graphs and Figures

The most common challenge we face in the clearance of our OER materials is the use of  diagrams, graphs and figures that have been taken from published research papers and are often the central item around which the teaching resource revolves.  It is normal practice in this case for the copyright to be fully signed over by the author to the publishers with the author only retaining a few rights to use or publish this material. But in terms of our project – the copyright situation is quite clear – it belongs to the publisher and we must approach them to ask for permission before releasing them under an open CC license. However, we should remember that it is not the facts, data or research that is ‘copyrighted’  but only the representation of those facts in the form of the diagram, graph or figure.  So, if possible, it is quite legal to re-represent the data held within a diagram or graph as long as you go right back to the original data and do not attempt to simply re-draw the diagram, which is certainly not allowed.  Of course what is re-representing the data and what is re-drawing the diagram or graph could be a very hazy difference and on the whole where possible, it would be better to contact the publisher. In many cases the diagram or graph is simply too complicated for easy re-representation anyway.  At least with these items, we normally have the advantage of knowing the source and the copyright owner.

There may in some cases be the possibility of using the known ‘Copyright Fair Dealing Exception’ of ‘Review and Criticism’ as a defence for using a known copyrighted diagram (an approach taken by some other OER projects). On the whole this may be more appropriate in the arts subjects where criticism and review are more integral parts of the teaching process than in these materials where the diagrams are used simply to disseminate the content of the data. So it may in some cases provide us with a way of getting around the rules, but is unlikely to replace simply asking for permission from the Publishers.

On the whole, the first course of action is going to be simply to ask the publisher who owns the copyright. We don’t know yet what there approach to the idea of their material being released on open licenses, but it is worth remembering that their ownership of this copyright may be open to challenge anyway, due to the fact that their agreement was with the authors and not their employers who would normally legally be the original copyright owners.

Whatever method of clearance is used, it is important to remember that we must always fully acknowledge and reference each use of a diagram anyway to prevent claims of plagiarism.

Maps

One further challenge that is coming up within our materials is the use and modification of maps.  Maps are a central and integral part of the GEES teaching resources and their use is well supported in education, but they are still copyrighted material and in many cases the copyright and commercial value of their intellectual content is well guarded by the owners.  They may therefore be considered ‘High Risk’ in copyright terms and special care should be taken. We (GEES Subject Centre) are currently trying to contact the OS to find out what their position is as far as the limited release of some of their maps in our OER and we will get back to you with any news.

However, it is not just British maps that we wish to clear.  Dr Richard Jones in Exeter has a few Norwegian maps that he wishes to use – so we need to find out the best way forwards for these.  We also need to consider what we can do in terms of re-drawing as some of these resources document the research which provides corrections to the original maps.

If you have any thoughts on the clearance of any of these, or other challenges, please do get back to me

Investigation of copyright, IPR and legal issues with Edina and OS: both utilised heavily by GEES departments r.e. cartography etc..

This meeting, held in London, was a major get-together for the HEA Subject Centres to allow them to share their experiences of the OER projects to date.

It was a very busy day with lots of input from HE Academy and JISC, but as is often the way with these meetings the most important learnings were made not in the formal content but rather over a cup of coffee in the intervals, talking with colleagues that are struggling with similar problem to your own.

The meeting was attended by Mike Sanders (C-change Manager) – re-acquainting himself with colleagues from other Subject Centres and Ed Bremner (C-change Co-ordinator) who was doing his best to keep up.

You can see all the slides for the day at:  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer/progmtgoct09.aspx

The day started with a session on IPR given by Jason Miles-Campbell from JISCLegal.

This talk and the discussion around it brought up some interesting points that had not really come up in any of our other sessions on copyright.

Moral Rights – We know that employees retain no copyright in the work they create whilst in employment, but it turns out that they don’t even have any ‘moral rights’ either. <no joy there for the author>

Copyright of Material in Repositories – Some institutes are claiming that the action of placing material on their own repositories was in some way a confirmation of their owning the copyright in those materials.  <although this seems very strange and hardly defensible>.

Use of Logos in Materials – There is a possible issue over the use of Institute Logos on the OER materials.  For our partners there is a general feeling that we wish to retain the ‘logo’ as a visual reminder of the attribution of the resource and that the positive ‘PR’ generated from these high quality resources is one of the reasons for doing the project in the first place. On the other hand, it appears that other OER projects take the opinion that to be truly re-usable the resources should not have any logos and should the logo be retained in a derivative work anyway? There is also a possible issue with the logo being released within a resource under a CC license.  Would this not mean that the logo had also been released under a license that allows derivatives? <I think this could run and run, I don’t think the licensing issue really matters for the logos which are also presumably protected by being Trade Marks>

Multi-License Resources – One possible outcome of using the CC licenses that was suggested from this meeting was that resources should be released under the <BY-NC-AS> Creative Commons license, but with a rider saying that there were a list of exceptions and giving the details of these. <So, it is all CC except this bit…oh and that bit…etc.  I don’t like this at all.  If it is released as BY-NC-AS, that is what it should be>.

Re-Presentation and Re-Drawing of Diagrams – We know that facts and data are not copyright, but that the diagram that conveys this information is. For this reason, in some cases it may be possible to re-present the data in another form which avoids copyright infringement, but great care must be taken that this really is a new representation of the facts and not simply a re-drawing of the diagram, which is not allowed.  <Certainly still a grey area, which in some cases may provide a possible alternative to clearance>.

Change of License in Upstream Copyright – There was some discussion on what happens if a copyrighted item is used whilst it is available under a cc license but is then subsequently returned to ‘all rights reserved’.  The opinion was that whatever the license was at the time it was used would be retained although there was likely to be a burden of proof if it went to court.

There was much under-the-breath muttering to support the generally held impression that on the whole, it would in future, be much easier to simply create the OER with materials that were all copyright cleared at the time of creation.

The other talk that stood out as being particularly interesting for C-change was the introduction of the new SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education) project from the Open University. This project is building on the OpenLearn project and will extend the use of OER to help support other programmes such as the HEA/JISC OER programme. The programme aims to produce a further 3,600 hours of OER content, but of particular interest to us is that this includes 75 hours of material on climate change. We really look forwards to hearing more about this programme and seeing how it might be able to help all the HEA/JISC OER programme and in particular what synergies there are between us and them with the material on climate change.