Scenario 5.

Introduction to licensing (1)

This work, excluding institutional logos, is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

The following resource was created for academic teaching staff within UK higher educational institutions as a part of
the Intellectual Property Rights For Educational Environments (IPR4EE) project of the University College Falmouth.
The IPR4EE project is funded by HEFCE and part of the JISC/HE Academy UKOER Phase II programme.

I am a new tutor teaching modules on an English Literature degree and have been asked by my
Course Leader to find resources for an online course. I have previously worked in the publishing
industry so I’m very aware of the risk of copyright infringement. How do I go about finding and using
material that is not restricted by copyright?

How would you advise this colleague?

Key questions

 Is it possible to find freely available, copyright-free resources?

 Can I edit or change any material that I find?
 Are there different rules that apply depending on where you are displaying the information?
 What is the difference between ‘public domain’ and ‘CC zero’?

Further information
See the factsheet P-27 Using the work of others from the UK Copyright Service for guidance on what
work may be available for you to use.
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others

See particularly:
Paragraph 4 - the type of work you may easily access
Paragraph 5 – Fair Dealing – the way in which you may use information without infringing copyright
Paragraph 7 – Duration of copyright for a range of published sources and media.

You can find free online literature resources from websites such as Classic Literature Library
http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/
You may need to consider whether the work is copyrighted in the UK but in the public domain of
another country. Different countries have different copyright rules and therefore if you want least
risk of infringement then you need to avoid downloading texts that are copyrighted in the UK but
available from overseas websites.

See Project Gutenberg which hosts over 33,000 free books that are copyright free in the US (but you
will need to check that they are also copyright free in the UK).
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Project Gutenberg definition of ‘free book’

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:No_Cost_or_Freedom%3F
The Project Gutenberg licence, including public domain use
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Project_Gutenberg_License

In creating any resources of your own that you may wish to share without any copyright restriction,
see Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Guidance on licensing a public domain work - http://creativecommons.org/choose/mark/

Creative Commons zero licence http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/