Methods
Copyright and Digital Publishing
Mandi Goodsett
This section will outline some basic information about copyright and how it applies to digital publishing, especially as it relates to your Digital Humanities Project. Please feel free to reach out to Mandi Goodsett (a.goodsett@csuohio.edu) with additional questions. Also, keep in mind that this is not legal advice. 🙂
Basics of Copyright
What is copyright?
According to United States Code, copyright is “the right of authors to control the use of their work for a limited period of time.”
The exclusive rights which Congress grants under the copyright are:
- To reproduce a work,
- To prepare derivative works,
- To sell, rent, lease, lend, or otherwise distribute the work,
- To perform the work publicly,
- To display the work publicly, and
- To publicly perform a work on a sound recording via digital transmission
What is protected by copyright?
To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original, and it must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression. The law lists eight media of expression which are included, but the list is not meant to be exhaustive:
- musical works, including any accompanying words
- dramatic works, including any accompanying music
- pantomimes and choreographic works
- motion pictures and other audiovisual works
- sound recordings
What is not protected by copyright?
A work is copyrighted if it is original and fixed in a tangible form. Works no longer must be registered and fixed with a copyright symbol to be protected. An original work fixed in a tangible medium is automatically protected by copyright.
Works which are not original, or which are not tangibly fixed, are not protected. The law also identifies several classes of material which are not subject to copyright protection:
- Ideas
- Procedures, processes, systems, and methods of operation,
- Concepts and principles
- Discoveries
Works created by employees of the United States federal government in the course of their employment are also not protected by copyright. Once a work’s copyright term has ended, that work is no longer protected by copyright and enters the public domain (see the Public Domain information below).
How long does copyright last?
It depends! Works created on or after January 1, 1978 are protected for a term of the life of the author plus 70 years. If the author is a corporation then the protection is for the shorter of 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation.
Works created and published prior to 1978 may be protected for different lengths of time. See the Copyright Term Tool developed by Cornell University for more information. Generally, works published in the United States before 1928 are in the public domain.
Special Considerations for Digital Publishing
Using the Copyrighted Work of Others
When we use copyrighted works for educational purposes in the classroom, often we can rely on copyright exceptions or fair use to protect our use. However, once you begin to share the work with a broad public audience, some of those protections go away or become more complicated. In general, to use copyrighted works in your digital project, there are four options.
- Use works in the public domain. Public Domain encompasses “all works that never had copyright protection and works that no longer have copyright protection” (Purdue University Copyright Office). All works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain. All works in the public domain are free for the public to use.
- Use works with a Creative Commons license. Copyright, while very important for protecting intellectual property, can pose some barriers to educators and others who want to share their work freely without being asked permission for use of their work on a frequent basis by others. Creative Commons licenses, rather than replacing copyright, layer over the top of copyright and allow the creator to give up some of their copyrights. Find out more about CC licenses and how to find CC licensed works.
- Rely on fair use. There is a part of U.S. Copyright Law that provides considerable flexibility for educational and other uses, such as parodies. It’s called the Fair Use Doctrine and it’s very important. Find more details about how to determine if your use is a fair use. Keep in mind that relying on fair use is a little risky, especially if you don’t have a lot of practice doing it. That’s why it’s better to use public domain and Creative Commons licensed materials if you can.
- Ask permission from the copyright holder. This is the last option here for a reason! It can be difficult to identify who owns the copyright in a work, much less how to reach that person. If you do want to ask permission, this copyright guide has some advice.
How Will You Share Your Own Work?
Remember, once you fix your project into a tangible form of expression, it has copyright protection. That means you are the copyright holder! With great power comes great responsibility … It’s up to you to decide how you would like others to be able to use your work. If you would like to make it possible for others to use it in certain ways without asking your permission, then you might want to add a Creative Commons license. Below is a breakdown of the elements you can include in your license.
“Six Licenses for Sharing Your Work” by Creative Commons is in the Public Domain.
Creative Commons provides an easy online tool for choosing and indicating your chosen Creative Commons license. Make sure to include the license information on your work so that everyone knows about its intellectual property status.
