Tips for Keeping it Legal

Keeping It Legal

Simply put, "keeping it legal" here refers to the (theoretically) simple act of being conscious about what you are doing.

Here's the basics:

Public domain content can be used however you want (but it is nice to say where you got it).
CC-licensed content must be cited appropriately (see below) and used in accordance with the specific license. If something is more strictly licensed than the project that you want to use it in, you can't use it.
All rights reserved content doesn't belong in your OER unless you've secured explicit permission (as previously discussed).

General Note about Attribution

As educators, we should all know plenty about satisfactorily giving credit where credit is due. The CC licenses differ little from all the major style guides when it comes to the vital info that you need to include.

Name of author (unless the author has explicitly waived this requirement)
Title of work (if applicable)
License details (go to the Creative Commons site for a bunch of markers you can easily copy/paste Links to an external site.if the work that you are attributing has the most recent 3.0 license)
Date of publication (if applicable)

Exactly how you are supposed to do all of this isn't set in stone. Make the attribution as close to the work and as prominent as possible without it being completely distracting and/or plain ugly.

Where Has All the Free Stuff Gone?

A common frustration with open resource development is that we seem to find ourselves suddenly without recourse to what used to be an unending horizon of "free" stuff online. As previously discussed, most of this content probably wasn't "free" in the first place.

Images

Licensed Images

Google Images Links to an external site., a literally amazing resource for all kinds of crazy things to look at, doesn't have to be abandoned. If, instead of just typing in your keywords and seeing what pops up, you use the advanced search function (currently accessible by clicking on the little cog button at the upper right after you've done an initial regular image search), you can filter the results so that only those CC-licensed in some way will be available.

Flickr Commons Links to an external site. is also a great way to find licensed images.

Byte: When using licensed images in your open resource, it is especially important here to keep in mind your plan, because you'll want to make sure that any image that you use in your open resource is licensed in the same way, if not with fewer restrictions.

If, for example, you want your presentation to be CC BY (that is, free to reproduce or modify with attribution, even for profit) and you find an image that is CC BY-NC (same, but forbidding commercial use), you can't use the image because embedding it in a larger work with a less restrictive license would invalidate your license by breaching the image's license.

Once you've located an appropriately-licensed image, put it in your resource along with sufficient citation Links to an external site.. Here's an example of what this might look like for an image taken from Flickr Commons:

Or, you could just copy/paste from the Creative Commons markers page Links to an external site.. We can't do that with this image, however, because it has an older (2.0) version of the license.

Byte: The ingredients of the nice attribution: title of work (if applicable), author (including link to author's Flickr page), and license details (including link to CC license).

We can hear some of you out there right now: "I'm not going through all of that just to use an image! My presentation needs twenty images!"

So there's the problem. The use of the licensed image requires some similar attribution. Simply pasting the URL under the image is, well, like pasting the URL of a source in parenthesis after a quote you've used in an essay (and we all, as instructors of composition, know what a no-no that is).

Unlicensed Images

Some sites offer catalogs of public domain images, like Pixabay Links to an external site.. Public domain images can be used freely for whatever purpose with no requirement for attribution. If an image is truly in the public domain, there can be no license placed upon it, so there shouldn't be any need for citation, etc. Read the fine print of the site that you are using to access the work.

The Best Kind of Images

Byte: The best kind (and we predict groans) are those that we create ourselves.

If you are even just barely talented, it takes little time to sketch out a basic drawing (see this course's home page) or take your own photo. If you include your own images in your open resource, you do not need to license them independently unless, for some reason, you would like them to be more available than the work as a whole. You can refer back to that discussion if you'd like.

Now let's actually put this great idea to work.