Copyright and Open Licensing
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Define copyright and open licenses.
- Explain the 5 R’s of open licenses.
An open license is a vital component of an open educational resource. Because of this, it is important that you understand how open licenses work within copyright law. Please note that you are not expected to be a copyright or open license expert. Consider this chapter as background information to provide context for the open publishing environment we are working in.
The Council of Chief State School Officers. (2016, December 13). What is an open license and how does it work? [Video file]. YouTube.
Copyright at Conestoga
Conestoga facilitates access to print, media, and electronic resources to support and enrich learning, teaching, and research in compliance with the following:
- Canadian Copyright Act
- Fair Dealing
- Conestoga Copyright Policy
All copying, selling, or distribution of print (books, articles, periodicals), media, or electronic resources in which copyright subsists shall comply with the guidelines/limits provided in the documents above, as well as other relevant federal and provincial laws and/or regulations and all applicable College policies.
Conestoga respects the rights of copyright owners and shall not deliberately copy, sell, distribute, or use any print or electronic materials, without explicit permission from the copyright owner, or in compliance with one of the aforementioned guiding documents. (Conestoga College Library, n.d.)
Copyright for Faculty and Staff – Conestoga Library
Licensing
The copyright status of a work determines what you can and cannot do with it.[1]. Most copyrighted works are under full, “all rights reserved” copyright. This means that they cannot be reused in any way without permission from the work’s rightsholder (usually the creator). One way someone can get permission to use someone else’s work is through a license, a statement or contract that allows the person requesting permission to perform, display, reproduce, or adapt a copyrighted work in the circumstances specified within the license. For example, the copyright holder for a popular book might sign a license to provide a movie studio with one-time rights to use their characters in a film.
Open Licenses
All OER are made available under some open license, a set of authorized permissions from the rightsholder of a work for any and all users. The most popular of these licenses are Creative Commons (CC) licenses, customizable copyright licenses that allow others to reuse, adapt, and re-publish content with few or no restrictions. CC licenses allow creators to explain in plain language how their works can be used by others.[2]
Why Open Licenses?
Open licenses are integral to what makes an educational resource an OER. The adaptability and reusability of OER make it so that they are not just free to access but also free for instructors who want to alter the materials for use in their course. For example, in the figure below, an openly licensed image has been traced to make it more readable for users.
The 5R’s of Open
One of the tenets of OER laid out early on in the open education movement was the idea of the 5 Rs (originally the 4 Rs) introduced by David Wiley (2014)[3]. These five attributes lay out what it means for something to be truly “open,” as the term is used in open education. The 5 Rs include:
- Retain = the right to make, own, and control copies of the content.
- Reuse = the right to use the content in a wide range of ways
- Revise = the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
- Remix = the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new
- Redistribute = the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others
While the “redistribute” and “revise” rights are the most commonly exercised rights in open education, each of the five plays an important role in the utility of an open educational resource. For example, without the right to “remix” materials, an instructor who teaches an interdisciplinary course would not be able to combine two disparate OER into a new resource that more closely fits their needs.
In the next chapter, we’ll look at Creative Commons licenses and how they facilitate the expression of the 5 Rs in unique ways.
Chapter Summary
- "Licensing" and "Public Domain" were adapted in part from UH OER Training by Billy Meinke, licensed CC BY 4.0. ↵
- By assigning an open license to your work, you allow any user to exercise the rights allowed under the license. You cannot restrict reuse by certain individuals or parties without changing the license itself. ↵
- Wiley, D. (2014). Defining the "open" in open content and open educational resources. Open Content. Retrieved from http://opencontent.org/definition/ ↵
A copyright license which grants permission for all users to access, reuse, and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.
A license permits users to certain rights over a copyrighted work. These can be exclusive (allowed for individual groups) or nonexclusive (allowed for all users). Licenses can be restricted by certain factors such as purpose, territory, duration, and media (Source: Findlaw.com).
A set of open licenses that allow creators to clearly mark how others can reuse their work through a set of four badge-like components: Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial, and No Derivatives.
