Hi Mary, I see that our WikiEducator family is true to form providing links and resource people to assist with your copyright questions. Copyright is a complex topic and especially when transcending international boundaries. Apology for the long email -- but this post may be useful for future members of our list with similar queries.
There are three important questions you need to consider: - What does the WikiEducator community consider to be "free content"? - What is the default copyright of resources you find on the Internet? - Who is the copyright holder of the materials you create? *What does the WikiEducator community consider to be "free content"?* WikiEducator subscribes to something called the Free Cultural Works definition (http://www.freedomdefined.org ). This definition is based on the essential freedoms associated with the Free Software Foundation. We have a tutorial which explains our position and provides links to the relevant sources: http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_free_content There are differences of opinion on the interpretation of the essential freedoms with regards to educational content -- however our WikiEducator subscribes to the Free Cultural Works definition (which also includes the public domain declaration -- which is technically not a license, but rather a declaration committing creative works to the public domain and you will need to check whether or not your country acknowledges the public domain.) We're in good company as a growing number of OER initiatives support the Free Cultural Works Definition. These include, WikiEducator, all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikinews etc) and the Connexions project. The free cultural works definition approves, for example of the following licenses: the GNU Free Documentation License, the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) and the Creative Commons Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA) as well as the Public Domain Declaration. *What is the default copyright of resources you find on the internet?* In the majority of cases, you must assume "all rights reserved" copyright on materials you find on the Internet, even in cases where there is no copyright statement. In terms of the Berne Convention, of which most countries are signatories, there is no need to register or assert copyright on creative works - see for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works (The Berne Convention attempts to "level the playing field" of national copyright legislation). Many sites will provide a copyright statement or license detailing how the materials may (or may not) be used. With particular reference to http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ this materials are all rights reserved. While the copyright page provides a few permissions to use the materials at no cost in restricted circumstances ( http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/copyright.html ) your freedoms to adapt and modify the materials are restricted. There is even a clear warning which states: "This site uses anti-plagiarism software to find other sites who violate this copyright by reproducing the lessons on their site in part or whole." -- Clearly breankingnewsenglish.com is not committed to sharing education materials freely and they have deployed software to police and make sure that you do not copy and adapt these materials and share them on the Internet . It would appear that this site is not committed to the educational values of sharing knowledge freely :-). You always have the right to contact the copyright holder to establish whether they will give you permission to use these materials under a license, or public domain declaration for the social good of education. I hope that they will accede to your request :-). The short answer to your questions regarding the http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ site is that WikiEducators may not use, adapt or modify these materials :-(. This is why its important for educators like yourself to help us create equivalents which teachers of the world CAN use :-) * Who is the copyright holder of the materials you create?* The next important question is to find out who is the first copyright holder of the materials you create. This will vary from country to country. - First google the Copyright Act for your country --- in most cases this will typically state that the Copyright of the materials you create under employment belong to the employer. So for example, in New Zealand teaching materials created by teachers working in the national education system belong to the employer, which in our case would be the Board of Trustees of individual Schools. It may be different in your country. This would also include teaching materials created after hours with particular reference to the empoyment agreements of New Zealand teachers funded by the Ministry of Education. - There is something called academic exception, which typically applies to Tertiary Education institutions where certain exceptions may apply where the original copyright of research publications may vest with the author. Again -- you need to check your national copyright legislation. - Finally, you need to check your individual employment agreement which may specify specific arrangements regarding copyright of the materials you create. There is also something called the "Fair Use" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use ) doctrine which applies in the US, or "Fair Dealing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing) which is used in Commonwealth Countries. This deals with the use of copyright materials without permission in restricted circumstances. However, as Fair Use and Fair Dealing pre dated the Internet -- there are many grey areas concerning the educational use on sites like WikiEducator. Two caveats with this information: - I am not a legal professional -- if you want legal opinion, best to get legal advice :-) - I'm not making any value judgements about Copyright --- this is an entirely different discussion. Hope this helps Cheers Wayne 2009/11/15 Mary <[email protected]> > Hello everyone, > > My name is Mary Ziller and I recently joined your wonderful group. I hope > to learn a lot with you. > > I have a question that I would like to ask the group. I searched the group > archives on "copyright" and found only one thread that did not answer my > question: > > *How much of a newspaper article can we use for online teaching and face > to face teaching? > * > How does a site like http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ get the > copyrights to publish its excellent materials which are based on real news > articles? > > And the admirable works by Susan Heyer *True stories in the news *series. > How does the copyright law work allowing her to produce ESL books based on > actual articles? > > I would like to write materials using published news articles, but don't > know how to get the copyrights permissions. Do they have to be purchased? > > Thanks for your help. > > Mary Ziller > > > > -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. 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