English, Literature & Writing (UNH Durham)

Copyright is a complex area of law.

Copying, modifying, displaying or distributing the work of others may require determining if

• the work is in the public domain,
• whether your use of it is covered by fair use (or another exemption)
• whether permission needs to be obtained from the copyright owner

The links below provide general information but not legal advice.

From the CC website:

"Creative Commons (CC) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to helping build and sustain a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture....

[We provide] CC licenses and public domain tools that give every person and organization in the world a free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; ensure proper attribution; and enable others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works"

"Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work?"

There are six different license types plus a public domain dedication tool (CC0). Note that the licenses and CC0 can't be revoked and that these can only be applied by someone who owns or controls the copyright in the work.

If you are using any text, images, or audio that are not your own creation, consider including:

• a notice of use restrictions on the opening page:
  • "Certain materials are included under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and have been prepared according to the multimedia fair use guidelines and are restricted from further use."
• acknowledgement and attribution through a credit section titled References
  • "Crediting the source must adequately identify the source of the work, giving a full bibliographic description where available (including author, title, publisher, and place and date of publication). The copyright ownership information includes the copyright notice (©, year of first publication and name of the copyright holder)."

The above text is from sections 6.2 and 6.3 of the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia, which are part of the Crash Course in Copyright (version 1), a tutorial on copyright created by Georgia Harper, University of Texas System.

The Purdue OWL site is recommended for citation examples for different types of media: MLA Works Cited: Other Common Sources

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If you are including photos, video, etc. that belong to you or your family, this is a possible citation format:

• [Title or Description] is the personal property of the [Last Name] family and is copyright protected.

Example:

• Photos of summer camping trip are the personal property of the A. B. Smith family and are copyright protected.

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Some ways to type the copyright symbol ©:

• MS Word: AutoCorrect converts (c) to ©
• Mac: Press Option and g
• PC: Press Alt and type 0169 on the numeric keypad