Learning Outcomes

Understand the appropriate guidelines for fair use and copyright law in the creation of educational multimedia.
Find available resources for open Creative Commons materials.

Overview

In this lesson, we are briefly learning about copyright, fair use, and citing your multimedia sources so you can do this correctly in your multimedia project(s). As you might expect with anything related to law, copyright issues are not black and white, but murky and open for debate. However, there are some basic guidelines you can use to make informed choices about how to be ethical in your use of created works.

Definitions

First, you need to know a few definitions.

Copyrighted Works
Anything created in any form (e.g. text, music, video, image) is automatically protected under copyright law—whether the creator wanted it protected or not! Copyright law restricts others’ abilities to use, display, or share that creation.

Public Domain
Something that has passed out of copyright protection. For example, Mozart’s symphonies, which are old enough to no longer be copyrighted (although a particular performance of them might be!).

Creative Commons
The alternative to blanket copyright protection. If a creator wants to give more freedom to how people use his/her material, they can license it as creative commons.

OK, let’s learn a little bit more about these different types of media in this video:

Copyright Transcript

Learning More About Copyright and Fair Use

If you feel you are still uncertain about copyright and fair use, you can learn more by reading this chapter from an open (creative commons-licensed) textbook by my colleague Royce Kimmons.

Learning More About Creative Commons

Unless you have prior experience with CC, I don’t expect the video above to have provided you enough explanation to be successful on the assignment. So learn more about creative commons licensing by:

Viewing this video: Wanna Work Together?
Looking around Creative Commons under the About and Licenses tabs.

How to Find CC Material

OK, You are now convinced CC is awesome, right? But where can you find CC material? Here is a list that will get you started (source: K-12 Technology Integration):

Search Engines

* Be sure to set usage rights to “free to use share or modify”.

** Be sure to click the arrow in the top left and select “Labeled for Reuse” in the bottom left.

Text Content Providers

Wikipedia —open encyclopedia
Simple English Wikipedia —simplified encyclopedia
Project Gutenberg —public domain texts
Wiki Source —source materials
Wiki Quote —quotations

Media Content Providers

Wikimedia Commons —open media
Freeplaymusic.com—cool website for fun music in all genres that you can use in multimedia projects. The licenses cost money for commercial use, but free for education.
Digital Public Library of America —public domain works
LibriVox —public domain audio books
Photo Pin —open photos from Flickr
Internet Archive —public domain works
U.S. Army —public domain images
Flickr —creative commons images
Vimeo —creative commons videos
Creative Commons Music —various creative commons music sites
Jamendo —creative commons music
Animal Photos —animal photos
Library of Congress —public domain works
Internet Archive —public domain works
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Digital Library —public domain works (mostly)

Open Courses

How to Cite Others' Work

In this class you will make many projects that use material from others. You will be expected to cite their material correctly, just like you would be expected to cite a quote in a research paper. In general try to provide the following information if it’s available:

Title of the work
Author or creator
Source—where can we find it? Don’t say “available on Flickr, or Google” because that’s like saying you got a book from the library! Tell us where you got it specifically so we can find it ourselves!
License—what kind of license does it have, so we know whether we can reuse it too? Copyright? CC? Public Domain?

Typically you should put the citation either right below the material when you use it or in a reference section at the end. For example, if you create a movie, you might have some rolling credits at the end.

If you aren’t sure how to cite something, try using this cool tool from Dr. Kimmons in the IPT Department.

What Does This Mean for the Multimedia Assignment?

Be sure to use material appropriately and abide by their licenses/permissions. This will likely be easier if you find creative commons and public domain material for your project. Finally, be sure to cite your sources in your video! (can be done at any point).