Copyright
Copyright is the area of law that governs the use of intellectual property. To use something created by someone else without compensating them appropriately is a crime. If your students are going to be creating media work, it is important that they understand copyright and how it affects their work.
Artists’ Rights
The creator of any creative work has rights over how their work can be reproduced and distributed. This defence of the rights of the creator has been enshrined in law for hundreds of years, and is vital to artists being able to earn a living from their work by any method beyond direct payment for performance. Any copying, distribution or alteration of copyrighted work, or a “substantial part” of that work, without the permission of the creator is unequivocally against the law, with certain exceptions. Permission can be granted, and will often involve the payment of fees. This protection usually continues for 70 years after the death of the artist, and may be administered by the estate. After this time the work passes in to the public domain, meaning it is freely available for adaptation and reproduction.
Note that these laws apply only within Australia – other countries have different copyright regimes.
More information on copyright in Australia can be found at these sites:
IP Australia: What is Intellectual Property?
Fair use
Australia has a policy supporting the limited use of copyrighted material in education. If a work is created as a part of a school assignment, it is generally permissible to reproduce part of a copyrighted work. This is known as the Statutory Licence.
In general, it is permissible to
Details of this arrangement can be found here:
There are other exceptions to copyright law. A full list of exceptions can be found here:
Creative reuse
Copyright laws protect the rights of artists, but they also restrict some forms of creative expression. Reusing material produced by other people underlies much of our current culture. Since Hercules joined the crew of the Argo, stories have been cross-pollinating and building on each other. In modern times, the rise of musical sampling in hip hop and other genres, and the ease of manipulation of any digital source have led to a new resurgence in creative reuse. Remixing is taking an original and altering it in some way, adding or subtracting to create a new effect. Mashup involves taking two or more ideas or genres and combining elements of them, like the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. These are only possible with material that is out of copyright, such as Jane Austen, or with the permission of the copyright holder.
Creative Commons
There is now an alternative to using copyrighted material in class. As the Internet grew, creating, sharing and remixing creative works became easier. Some creative people saw this as a positive, and set about creating a legal framework to support sharing of creative works. Their answer is the Creative Commons system, which offers creators a range of licences governing the use and re-use of their work.
Creative Commons licences are a type of copyright licence. They exist within the copyright system, and are designed to allow artists to chare their copyrighted material in a manner that suits them.
There are four possible conditions on a Creative Commons licence. All CC licences have the condition of Attribution – the creator of the original work must be credited. No Derivatives indicates the creator does not want any changes made to the material. Non-commercial means the creator does not give you permission to make any sort of money off any derivatives you create from their work. Share-Alike means the creator wants any works you create based on theirs to be shared in the same way their work was shared with you.
These four conditions can be combined into six licence types:
Attribution
This licence only requires that any derivatives credit the original. Anything else is allowed. You can feel free to remix, mash up, cut, fold, bend and mutilate, as long as you credit the original creator.
Attribution Share Alike
This license requires credit to the original creator, and that any derivative works also give this credit. This means anything you create based on their work must not only point to them as the original owners, but you must also allow anyone else who wishes to sample or remix your work to do so.
Attribution No Derivatives
No derivatives mean no changes may be made to the material, but it can be shared any way you like as long as the attribution is correct. This means no remixing, cutting or reuse. You can post and share as much as you like, but not make changes.
Attribution Non-Commercial
This lets you reproduce and alter the original non-commercially, that is, in a way that is not intended to earn money.
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives
This license allows redistribution, but only for non-commercial purposes. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
This information is adapted from the page:
Creative Commons in the Classroom
There is a large and growing body of Creative Commons work available for you and your students to use in class, or indeed however you choose. Below are pointers o some of these resources.
Creative Commons sound
Sound is one of the most common things people seek under a CC licence. CC sound allows you to soundtrack a video or presentation with a clear conscience.
CCMixter is a searchable database of CC licensed music and remixes.
Jamendo hosts whole albums by many artists in a range of genres licensed under the Creative Commons
Musopen is a collection of classical and orchestral music available for free use
Freesound focuses on sounds, rather than songs
Creative commons images
This link gives details on how to use Google to search for only CC images:
Google Creative Commons images
Freephotobank is a CC licensed stock image gallery
Flickr, the image hosting service, has a listing of CC images:
Openclipart hosts, as one might expect, a large library of free clipart organised by category.
General CC resources
Wikimedia Commons is a large and growing database of CC resources of all types
Creative commons search - although CC does not host their own search engine, this page links to several search services provided by other sites.
Pool is an initiative of the ABC for the sharing, remixing and reuse of resources online.
To learn more about Creative Commons in Australia, please visit Creative Commons Australia
Open Education Resources
Open Education Resources represent an initiative to provide open resources for use in any educational context. They are often supplied under a Creative Commons or related licence. These include free textbooks, course notes, and other materials.
A general overview of the movement can be found here:
Open Education Resources
Worldwide repository of Open education material
OER Commons
Material from the UK’s Open University programme
A collection of Open Education Resources
Lesson ideas
Examine the idea of a remix or mashup.
Debate the merits of protection and openness. How long should works be protected for?
Support student understanding of copyright by using or adapting the handout
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