Hello my name is Inga Haugen and I am your librarian.
This presentation is designed to assist Extension Master Gardeners in the commonwealth of Virginia
but anyone who finds it useful is absolutely welcome to use the information in here.
This is an intro to copyright for extension master gardeners.
to talk about copyright today,
I will say that I am not a lawyer but I am a librarian and I am here to help you understand
what copyright is and how it can affect what you're doing as an Extension Master Gardener.
Extension Master Gardeners offer advice resources and education when you are trying to share your
resources and then to educate you might want to use some resources that have already been created
and to be able to use them appropriately within the correct legal context we need to understand
what copyright is so we know what we are allowed to do when you are pursuing your education your
advising and your sharing of resources so what is copyright. Copyright is a way to be able to
work with resources that have been created. Copyright holders may hold the license the
copyright for around 70 years and copyright works with ways of copying, sharing, publicly performing,
displaying, transmitting and working with prequels or sequels or just in general if you're going to
work display or connect with a resource. You're going to need to understand what copyright does
so why does copyright matter in the US and that's another thing to consider. The way that I'm talking
about copyright absolutely depends on the fact that we're working in the US legal system and
I will be speaking as if everyone else is going to need to abide by the US legal system because we
are Extension Master Gardeners which are connected to our land grant system for Virginia Cooperative Extension.
And we are based in Virginia therefore US copyright applies so we have three categories
to consider with copyright. It's protected by copyright because it is owned by you
which is a pretty easy way to be able to work with things if you take a picture of a butterfly
you have all of the rights to be able to share it let other people use it whatever else that way
it can be protected by copyright because it's owned by somebody else so we need to understand
what kind of copy rights they allow us to be able to use things and then there's public domain
and which is most of what anything that comes out of the federal government and then
most of what comes out of any kind of extension program resources or anything else that way so as
we work with copyright if something comes from the federal government or from Virginia Cooperative
Extension. We generally have the copyright in the public domain which means it's real easy to use
public domain also counts and works with expired copyrights and so in that
aspect the person who originally had the copyright has passed away and it has been more
than 70 years and so then it enters the public domain so at this point in time works created.
Previous to 1925 are what's entering the the public domain those details are very
uh specific and if you have any more questions about that you are welcome to contact me or
other librarians but let's keep talking about why copyright matters with Extension Master Gardeners.
Let's dive in a little bit more about just what is copyright? excuse me so It is a power to promote
the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries so copyright is trying to be able
to give attribution to give the usage of and the ability to profit by the works that they've done.
Copyright has been established by the US constitution and protects original
and fixed works for a limited time so that's generally life in 70 years. um
so when I was talking about you know 1925 that's not necessarily life in 70 years but um
there's some differences that way uh when it has been an entity created by
an organization. That's when things are starting to come into
the public domain that way if there's not a personal um authorship to that space but
the most interesting thing about copyright I think is that It is automatic. You don't need
to register it anywhere. It absolutely happens so when you take that picture of that butterfly,
you are automatically a copyright holder It is automatically copy written.
Hey, if you infringe on somebody else's copyright there are some challenges, there are some
difficulties, there are some problems which is one of the reasons that we're talking about this today.
As people coordinated and associated with Virginia Cooperative Extension's master gardener program
we don't want to create negative academic consequences. We don't want to take our name
and drag it through the mud because we are using somebody else's work inappropriately.
We certainly don't want to deal with legal penalties and cost US resources
and it's very unlikely that there would be jail time but there is an aspect within copyright law
where those fines and penalty penalties could be assessed if you're working with materials
incorrectly and mostly it's just the loss of time and the energy put into headaches worrying
navigating different things and so let's learn about how to do it right to be able
to avoid all of that you can consider me a safe resource to be able to help you navigate
this environment and all sorts of other people in Cooperative Extension and within
the librarianship are also very happy to help so I hope by the end of this module you will
understand, how to work with copyright and how to ask for more help if need be let's keep learning
so more copyright basics let's talk about works that cannot be copyrighted so you can't copyright
data you can't copyright ideas or a method by which to do something so the way that I
pour my coffee into the cup is not something one can copyright you can't copyright my name,
you can't copyright facts and news so the fact that it is a beautiful day today with snow that
has been there and snow that is coming none of that information or the way that I have done
that or said that or conveyed that information to you can be copyrighted the fact that there's snow
on the trees that I can see as I look out my window that's not something you can copyright
conversations that just happen on the corner of the street that are not recorded in any way cannot
be copyrighted. I could copyright this presentation in this module because it is being recorded
so it is a fixed work. This is now fixed so now let's segue into talking about other things
that can be copyrighted. Sound recordings. This is a sound recording in addition to a visual recording
so things that are recorded in that way pantomime and choreographed works literary works like books,
musicals, dramatic works, plays that are recorded, computer programs, architectural works, drawings,
blueprints, sometimes the buildings themselves but that's a very bizarre case so in general the
things that we'll be working with are um aspects of recordings that we want to be able to reference.
So as Extension Master Gardeners with the advice, education and resources that you want to share.
There's going to be some times where there's facts news and individual data points
but they're going to be recorded and structured in a way that they are considered a media or a
resource that has been copyrighted. So let's learn how to work with things to be able to share them.
In the course of your life you may want to copy a resource, copy someone else's work
in your teaching. At some point you may want to publicly perform
someone else's work in your daily life, at some point you might want to create a derivative of
somebody else's work in your master gardener work. I think this will be the time this will
be the instance that most of what you do is what hinges on copyright and so an example for this
is that my grandmother Betty Storley has taken a picture of a butterfly, that's absolutely beautiful.
You want to be able to use that picture of the butterfly in your own presentation to
be able to show the types of plants that you can plant to attract that type of butterfly.
It would be a use of my grandma's picture to be able to use that butterfly picture in your
presentation. If my grandmother had already pulled together a presentation on plants to plant to
create a butterfly garden and you want to be able to expand it to say here's what works in minnesota
thank you betty storley and now here's what we're adding to what works in virginia that would be a
derivative of her work and that's many times what I think we're going to want to work with.
In that kind of way for a more specific involved aspect but the first example that I said where
you were going to use her butterfly picture in your presentation would be taking a copy.
Right? So copying and taking a creative or taking a derivative of is probably some ways
that you're going to be working with things and then publicly displaying things in a banner or
a poster in a space that you're teaching or you're staffing a table to be able to share information
is another way that you might have to work with copyright to be able to do what you want to do.
So let's talk about what's covered and protected by copyright and we're going to walk through these.
there will be other modules that cover fair use and creative commons in much more depth.
So as we're walking through things today, if you have further questions about those things I will
refer you to those modules and you'll have an opportunity to learn more about those things.
But for now let's talk through and walk through these five steps is the work protected by copyright.
No it's a type of work that can't be copyrighted so you can use it. No somebody at Virginia
Cooperative Extension made this and so it's not in copyright. It is in the public domain.
No, I took that picture of the butterfly. Great, you don't need to do anything else you are welcome
to keep moving forward with how you want to work with things. The answer is yes. It is protected by
copyright we move to step two, Is there a specific exemption in the copyright law that covers use?
The biggest things that will probably go with what you're working with come
from these two sections the idea that we're teaching right so that exception
is talking about in good faith the idea that the exemption is specifically set for um
doing face-to-face teaching to be able to make that happen. If this module was actually done in
a synchronous time frame so at the same time where everybody shows up we turn on our video to be able
to meet together and then afterwards we close and step away that's still considered teaching
and um was is is within an exemption recorded matters are a little bit different and so we will
address those again. Is there a license that covers my use luckily we have some thoughts around that
again Virginia Cooperative Extension helps us out because they have this statement to tell us
what they want us to be able to do so Virginia Cooperative Extension materials are available
for public use that's that public domain reprint or citation without further permission you don't
need to call me up and say hey Inga can I use this because this is printed on those resources
and all you need to do to be able to have appropriate permission to use these resources
is to include credit to the author and the photographers that's really fair you're just
giving credit to the people that put the work into making the resource and you're also making
sure that there's breadcrumbs to follow if there's something that's wrong or needs changing by giving
credit to authors and creators of content we can use those breadcrumbs to find them again to tell
them about problems to be able to do other things that way so this is a license that covers your use.
Creative commons licenses I'll remind you I have also created another module to be able to go more
in depth to be able to explain what they are in a very brief overview. Creative commons license are a
type of license that lays on top of copyright and so this is the way that the rest of the world can
show what kind of license that they are granting to you to be able to use things. Virginia Tech
can use creative commons licenses as well. We have chosen to be able to use language that gives
humans an ability to be able to read this statement and understand what's going on.
These symbols show people with symbols instead of words what they can do and the details
of these different things are available at um creative commons website and there's also machine
readable components that goes into this so that when you search for images that are licensed to
be able to use in the way that you want to, the machines can sort things out to be able to show
these options to you. So creative commons licenses are a type of license that covers your use.
The details of these very briefly. The first,
item in the upper left hand corner says CC and then it says BY that's the indication that they
say that you're welcome to use the resource as long as you say who has created it who it is by.
One other example says CC BY ND. ND stands for no derivatives. So in this case, you couldn't
take the butterfly garden presentation my grandmother has created and then add to it
for Virginia because my grandmother has said that you cannot add derivatives to it. You may
only use it in the manner that she has created it. As long as you give her attribution because the
BY is also there. So these licenses stack and you can mix and match them in different ways.
Another reason to understand creative commons licenses is that you may add these licenses to
the works that you create so that way you don't need to have somebody track back to you and ask
permission. You can send your works out into the world with your permissions already stated.
So you are a copyright holder you have created content and then in the future when you want to
be really fancy about stuff you can add creative commons licensing to be able to say what you want
to have other people have access to what you're making. I encourage you for anything that
you're creating for Extension Master Gardeners to be able to apply a license that is as open
as you can make it that allows as many things to happen with it as you can because it is good
practice to be able to share and be open as part of the land grant tradition and mission.
However there might be times where it is most appropriate to be able to keep copyright
and not allow it to be as open that's something that you need to discuss as you go but as a
default I say that anything that we're creating in this space should be as open as possible
because our intent is to advise, educate and share resources this is a way to be able to do that.
When you're considering copyright a fourth question to consider is
my use covered by fair use you need to know what fair use is and so again there's another
module that dives into fair use much more deeply on the top level the idea of fair use
is is the use that you're putting to it fair as laid out by the law so the idea to be able
to know if something is fair use or not is to be able to balance all of the reasons
that you're using it against the benefit or harm that could come to the person that's created it.
Here's some more details around that transformative and um aspect of how
you're using things so just two questions to ask has the material you've taken from
the original work been transformed by adding a new expression or meaning and
was the value added to the original by creating new information insights or
understandings or new aesthetics does it look very different something to be able to consider.
If you'd like more information about copyright, we certainly have more information available
at the library. Please come and come and check it out and look over more details. There is a
way to be able to weigh their use with some of the um
mechanisms that we have in place so there's like tick boxes that you might be able to see on the
screen here in this this shot and so it says if you can tick more boxes in the favors fair use
side then that gives you an idea if you have to tick more boxes on the opposes fair use
that gives you an understanding of that as well. There's another tool that's available. The fair
use evaluator that takes you through a much more detailed structure and then you can actually print
out your results to be able to attach them to what you're doing to be able to say, hey I considered
this. It showed me fair use with what I have and then you can move forward at that point in time
Is it necessary to do a fair use evaluator for what you're doing for extension master gardeners.
Maybe for doing presentations to local audiences when you're in a strictly teaching capacity
it's probably not likely if you're trying to create publications that are going to be
published in a very broad way doing a fair use evaluation might be useful you're welcome to
contact me to be able to help you think about that. And question number five, I understand
why it is structured as the last question because you do want to make sure that you don't need to
ask permission first but there's a part of me that says we should have talked about this first. Do you
need permission from the copyright owner for the use that you're putting it to part of the licenses
and the examples of what we've talked about before is the way that the copyright owner is giving us
permission by putting a CC BY license on something they are already showing us how
they're giving us permission to do something and so if they haven't done that kind of licensing
where it's automatic for machines to read and for humans to read we might need to actually ask
the person who's created it if we could have permission to be able to use it.
Finding their contact information, reaching out to contact them, waiting to hear back from them
and then they might say sure you can use it but you have to pay me $300, takes a lot of work so I
do think it's appropriate to consider this last step last because I think it should be the last
thing that we should reach for there are many other wonderful opportunities and options before
reaching out to contact people directly that will allow us to be able to do our work fairly well.
So I hope at this point in time, this has been an overview of copyright that has helped you
understand some basics, understand how copyright connects to extension master gardeners and their
work and how this can help you uh do some of that work better and with less worry and concern and at
any point in time you have more questions please feel free to reach out and thank you for your time.