The internet is a huge free resource of useful material. Or is it? Aside from the need to know what is accurate and trustworthy content to use for study-related purposes, internet users sometimes think that anything found on the internet can be taken off and used by anyone. This is not the case. Intellectual property rights apply as much to content the internet as they do to printed materials.
In these activities you will explore issues of ownership in regard to digital content on the internet and find out how to identify what you can and cannot freely re-use.
Activity 1: Who does it belong to?
How much do you know about issues of ownership and use of content on the internet? In this activity you are going to listen to student views about ownership and check your own understanding about what you can and can't do.
Instruction
Listen to three students giving their own views about ownership and the internet. Whose view is closest to your own? Next, read each of the statements that follow and decide whether you think it is true or false. Select the appropriate button and then read the feedback.
Images generated by a Google search can be downloaded for use in presentation slides etc.
To check whether or not you can download and use an image found in a Google search, you will need to double click on the image and then follow the link to the source site for the image. Then you will need to look at the 'terms and conditions' usually located at the bottom of the main page. 'All rights reserved' will indicate that the creator is not giving you permission to re-use their work. However, you may find some images with a Creative Commons licence attached. This licence allows you to re-use them freely with no restrictions or with certain restrictions (sometimes about adapting and sometimes about re-use in commercial contexts). This varies according to the precise type of Creative Commons licence attached.
To avoid the work involved in checking the copyright status of each individual image, large banks of images all with Creative Commons licences attached can be found here: Flickr Creative Commons Wikimedia Commons
Video clips such as those in Youtube can be downloaded to your desktop and modified.
Sections 7 and 8 of the Youtube terms and conditions of use page do not allow downloading and/or modifiying of videos. You may, however, link to a Youtube video (right click and select 'embed code') but for limited purposes (see terms and conditions): Youtube terms and conditions
Video (and audio) clips that have Creative Commons licences attached granting permissions to download and adapt content can be found here: Wikimedia Commons:videos
It is okay to link to a website but you should include an acknowledgement of the source.
Most websites are not opposed to links being made to them for educational purposes; however, if you are citing or using the website as a source for academic related work, it is normal practice to attribute the source by including a reference. You should always check the terms and conditions of use on a website first.
Nothing on the internet is actually free to use.
Some creators are sharing their educational content openly and readily under Creative Commons and other licences which grant various permissions to users. This is being done through the internet in various ways. Some of this open educational content can be accessed through repositories - online libraries of shared teaching and learning resources. Users can share their own resources or download those of others by creating a personal account.
Here is an example of an open teaching and learning repository containing OERs (Open Educational Resources) for the Humanities disciplines: HumBox
You can make extra copies of an internet journal article to give to your classmates.
An article from a free online journal or one that you or your institution have subscribed to can usually be printed out for personal use. A ready-to-download pdf copy is often available on the relevant web page. However, making multiple copies is not normally permitted and if this is attempted, tracking on the web page may alert the provider and access to the journal can be blocked. If you wish to check what you can and cannot do in relation to an article in an online journal, it is best to check the 'terms and conditions' page or the author guidelines. These should tell you where you stand.
Copying and pasting text from the internet into your assignment is now accepted practice.
Copying (and pasting) any source material and claiming it as your own academic work is totally unacceptable and you will be heavily penailised for plagiarism. Although software makes detection easy nowadays the temptation for some students to commit plagiarism in this way this remains.
The correct procedure to follow is this: if you wish to incorporate source material you have found on the internet in an assignment you are writing, you will most probably need to paraphrase (rather than quote) it. You must include an in-text reference to the author/ website provider and date of access, as well as full reference details in your reference list or bibliography.
The exact format for a bibliographic entry will depend on the referencing conventions you are using but here are two examples: Watson, J. (2010) A case study: developing learning objects with an explicit learning design. Electronic Journal of e-Learning 8(1). Retrieved 10th December 2010, from http://www.ejel.org/Volume-8/v8-i1/v8-i1-art-5.htm. This is APA referencing style and relates to an article in a journal that is only available on the internet.
Watson, J. (2010) A case study: developing learning objects with an explicit learning design. Electronic Journal of e-Learning 8(1). Available from http://www.ejel.org/Volume-8/v8-i1/v8-i1-art-5.htm. (Accessed 10.12.2010). This is the Harvard style of referencing for the same source.
Activity 2: Rules of use and re-use
Institutions, teachers and students are sharing their digital resources for teaching and learning more and more on the web. Resources shared in this way are known Open Content (OC) or OERs (Open Educational Resources). In some case, the content creators or owners give away certain rights to users as well as making the resources accessible through a teaching and learning repository. The rights you are granted as a user may or may not include permission to download, modify, use for commercial (as well as educational) purposes etc. You always need to credit the person who created the materials.
As a student you may well need to search for digital content to adapt for your own purposes. In this activity you are going to explore how to identify what you can and cannot re-use, and what kinds of permission may be granted to you as a user.
Instruction
Look at this terminology used in relation to copyright matters and match each term with its explanation by first clicking on the term on the left and then on a matching description on the right. A line will appear linking the two items. You can change your answers at any point. Check your answers or select the reset button to clear them and restart. Then read the feedback.
Here is the terminology used in relation to copyright matters matched with explanation: Creative Commons licence - A range of six licence types which creators can apply to their creative work in order to give certain permissions regarding re-use. Open content / open source - Creative work that the owner permits others to copy or modify. The first term includes OERs. The second term is particularly applied to software and its code. GNU General Public Licence - A licence which gives users the right to 'copy, redistribute, and modify a work' but also requires any copies or derivatives to be made available under the same licence. All rights reserved - A phrase found on some creative work indicating that the copyright holder retains (i.e. is NOT sharing) their rights regarding the work, especially not permitting derivatives.
The GNU General Public Licence is less commonly used in the UK. It is also more commonly used in association with software rather than e-content. More information about this licence type can be found here: GNU public licences
