Understanding copyright

From Karnataka Open Educational Resources

Origin - Idea of property

creator / purchase should 'own' property allow perpetual use and control

File:MOOC OER- Copyright.mm

Ideas and ownership

copyright law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright extended over time, now for 50 years after death of author.

Copyright – includes many rights

  1. Right to re-use
  2. Right to give to others
  3. Right to make changes
  4. Right to sell
  5. Attribution right

Each of these rights can be relaxed by the author. The two extremes are "all rights reserved" v/s "Public domain". In between we have different rights relaxed

  1. Right to re-use
  2. Right to give to others
  3. Right to make changes
  4. Right to sell
  5. Attribution right

Illustrations of relaxation of copyright

Software – GPL (General Public License) – Free and Open Source Software

Content – CC (Creative Commons) – Open Educational Resources, open content, open access

  1. CC – BY - Attribution - (giving credit to the author, mentioning author name in the article)
  2. CC – NC - Non commercial- (you can share the article with others but you cannot sell it / make profit from it)
  3. CC – ND - Non derivative - (you can share it but you cannot make any changes to it, you cannot make any derivative from the article)
  4. CC – SA - Share alike - (if you make any changes to the article, you must also release it under the same license. If the original resource was having copyright CC BY SA, if you make any changes, your version should also be released under the same copyright CC BY SA)
  5. CC – BY – NC – ND ((you can share the article with others giving credit to the author, but you cannot sell it / make profit from it, you cannot make any changes to it, you cannot make any derivative from the article)

Eg KOER – CC BY SA NC and NROER – CC BY SA