Authors Jonathan A. Poritz
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
Awesome Attributions and Lovely Licensing Statements:
How OER Practitioners Can Use Creative Commons
Licenses With Style and Substance
Jonathan A. Poritz
jonathan@poritz.net
poritz.net/jonathan
2 December 2022
Open Oregon Educational Resources Webinar
This slide deck, except where otherwise indicated, is by Jonathan Poritz and is released under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This version: 03 Dec 2022 01:16CET.
These slides, also in editable form and accompanied by the data and code used to make the graphs herein,
are available at https://poritz.net/jonathan/share/AAaLLS/ .
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 1 / 28
Land acknowledgement
Before we begin, I must acknowledge that I learned much of what
we’ll be talking about today while I was living in the unceded ter-
ritory of the Ute Peoples. The earliest documented people in that
area also include the Apache, Arapaho, Comanche, and Cheyenne.
An extended list of tribes with a legacy of occupation there can be
found on the Colorado Tribal Acknowledgement List.
I am grateful for the chance to have lived and worked in that beau-
tiful place and will always cherish that memory, even though I am
no longer a resident there.1
1
And where I live now there is no tradition of land acknowledgements of which I am aware.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 2 / 28
Legal warning
Please note that:
IAmNotALawyer.2
Moreover:
3
Even if I were a lawyer, I would not be your
your lawyer.
Therefore:
Nothing in this presentation should be construed as legal advice!
2
In fact, legal expertise seems to have skipped a generation in my family: my mother is a [retired] judge and one of my sons is a law school graduate!
But, while I have passed the CopytrightX course from Harvard Law School and done various trainings such as the CC Certificate course and the University
of Amsterdam International Copyright Summer Course, I have no legal degree or experience.
3
Not because I don’t like you, it’s just that one doesn’t end up in a lawyer-client relationship without knowing, and I don’t know any of you in that way!
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 3 / 28
Warning: Quite limited scope
This is a talk for beginners using Creative Commons licenses or materials shared with
Creative Commons licenses.
Or perhaps for folks who want a refresher.
Probably not for experts, e.g., copyright librarians, intellectual property (IP) lawyers, or
those who have taken the Creative Commons Certificate course.
Although possibly experts who are here might have something to add to what I say –
please don’t hesitate to jump in to contribute, if so! – or might be interested in very
much the perspective of someone (me) who has used and written OER and was in the
classroom for nearly 100,000 years.4
There will also be resources and links which could be useful at all levels of CC-experience.
4
base two
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 4 / 28
Structure of our session
We will start with some discussion of context: the “Why.”5
The discussion starts with talking about Intellectual Property [IP] Law.
Since that can be a bit dry, there will be some interactivity, or at least activity, for you to
perform. Please open a blank document on your computer, an empty “Note” on your
phone, or, if you’re old school, grab a pen and paper.
Note if you feel like you didn’t have time to finish one of our activities – or otherwise
want to consult the content or use the links, etc. – these slides are available at the URL
to the bottom left of your screen, as are all of the files you would need to remix it if you
wanted,6 under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Our discussion about IP law starts with copyright. “What’s copyright got to do with it?”
you cry! Well, first of all, let’s talk about what and where copyright is.
5
If you’re just here for the “How,” feel free to take a short nap: I’ll wake you when we get there.
6
although it was written in LATEX, which is apparently not everyone’s favorite authoring tool
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 5 / 28
Activity 1: Where is copyright?
For the next two minutes:
If possible, make a brand-new, copyrightable work – a work which could be copyrighted
(in the United States) if you so chose. Use anything around you to which you have
access: paper and pen/pencil; laptop; phone with its audio and/or video recording
capacities; pipe-cleaners and modeling clay you may have in your back pocket....
If it is not possible to create a copyrightable work under these circumstances, write a few
sentences, record a video, or otherwise fix in some tangible medium your own original
words describing why you cannot do so.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 6 / 28
Discussion 1: Copyright is everywhere (in academia)
In the United States,7
“...works of original expression fixed in a tangible medium...”
“original” But very minimal originality suffices. E.g., your
vacation snaps are probably boring but copyrightable8 .
“expression” Not ideas [which however may be patentable].
Some devilish details: fictional characters are
copyrightable; recipes and theorems are not; some
plotlines are, others are scènes à faire and so
are not copyrightable....
“fixed ...” E.g., this is why there’s always a recorder going in
the back of a jazz club – now do you want to record
your presentations?
7
as specified in §102 of the Copyright Act 17 U.S.C.
8
...probably ... but IAmNotALawyer and nothing in this presentation constitutes legal advice!
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 7 / 28
Activity 2: How to get that “©”
For the next minute:
If possible, get, or at least, start the process of getting a legal copyright on the work you
just made. This may involve:
• adding some text to your work [then: do that], or
• going to a government website [use your phone or laptop: get the URL to share with
the class], or
• filling something out and mailing it [along with something else, perhaps? make a
packing list!] somewhere [get the form, or a link to it, and the address, to share with
the class], or
• something else?
If you must pay a fee as part of this process, wait at the place where you have to
enter in your credit card number, and we’ll all share that in the discussion to follow.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 8 / 28
Discussion 2: The “©” is automatic!
Under the Berne Convention – originally signed in 1886; today it has 177 signatories and
is overseen by the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO]9 – copyright is
“frictionless”, in that it springs into existence without any requirement of formal
registration.
10
Of course, this only matters if your work is
created or consumed in one of the countries
colored blue to the right (or see this list of
non-Berne signatory countries [not entirely
up-to-date], which goes from Afghanistan,
Angola, and Burundi through Turkmenistan,
Tuvalu, and Uganda):
Conclusion: Nearly everything faculty, staff, and students create in institutions of higher
education is born in chains (of copyright).
For this reason, for academics not to know something about copyright would be like a
doctor who knows nothing of liability law....
9
Cory Doctorow says that WIPO “bears the same relationship to bad copyright law that Mordor has to evil in Middle Earth”
10
“The signatories of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works,” by User:Conscious was released under a CC BY-SA
3.0 license.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 9 / 28
Activity 3: What is copyright good for?
In the next minute, write down four things:
1. something you can do with a work whose copyright you own
2. something you can do with a work whose copyright you do not own
3. something you cannot do with a work whose copyright you own
4. something you cannot do with a work whose copyright you do not own
Bonus round: What do time and space have to do with it?
Do any of your answers above change if you and the other party involved – the
copyright owner or person performing the dis/allowed action – are separated in time
and/or space? If so, by how much or by what kind of border or line?
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 10 / 28
Discussion 3: The uses of copyright
A copyright owner has the exclusive right to
• perform,
• display publicly,
• copy,
• distribute, and
• create derivative works from the copyrighted work,
or to authorize other parties to do so, for payment.
Some devilish details:
Is streaming the same thing as copying, legally? Because it is, technically.
Is putting a link to a work the same as copying or distributing it?
What constitutes a derivative work is tricky! Correct typos: no; translate: yes;
change file format: no; write a sequel: yes; put in anthology: no; etc.
In the OER/CC world, the concepts of a remix and a derivative work have an
... unfortunate relationship.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 11 / 28
Activity 4: Is copyright all-powerful?
Do you know of any limitations to copyright? Based on situation, time, location, use...?
Two activities to explore that:
Think of (and write down) something a user could do with a copyrighted work that the
copyright owner might not like, but could not prevent. (Your examples may differ
depending upon the kind of work being used and the legal jurisdiction....)
Why did earlier slides talk about “copyright owners?” Is there any difference between
copyright owner and author/artist/creator ?
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 12 / 28
Discussion 4: Limitations to copyright.
Works-for-hire: the copyrights to works produced as part of someone’s employment
belong to the employer, not the employee.
Academic exception-to-the-exception: Traditionally, academics are exempt from the
works-for-hire doctrine – but check your contracts, this is not always true, and often
varies depending upon the role of the employee (full professor, adjunct, librarian,
administrative staff, etc.)!
US Federal exemption: works which would fall under the works-for-hire doctrine with
the US federal government as employer are automatically free of copyright – they are
born directly into the public domain.
Limited duration: the exclusive control vested in a copyright owner only lasts for a finite
period of time: in the US, 70 years after the death of the author, the works “fall into the
public domain.”11
11
The rules are more complicated for works-for-hire, and any work created before 1978.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 13 / 28
Discussion 4 (cont): A useful limitation to copyright.
“.. the Fair use 12 of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction
..., for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching
(including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is
not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made
of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered
shall include –
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial
nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted
work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”
§107 of the Copyright Act
Actually, for OER adopters, adapters, and creators,13 an much more relevant resource is
the brilliant Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources.
12
a closely related concept in Commonwealth countries is called fair dealing there.
13
I’m trying to get the OER community to use the verb “to AAC,” pronounced “to ace,” meaning “to adopt, adapt, or create.”
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 14 / 28
Activity 5: Why all this copyright power?
Why would anyone set up a legal system which puts this kind of exclusive control in the
hands of copyright owners?
Take two minutes to brainstorm with folks around you (if you are not alone where you
are) to come up with some reasons why such a system might make sense.
You might classify your reasons as to whether they are utilitarian [centered on the
consequences – often economic – of actions] or deontological [based on rules, often
coming from an abstract notion of the moral sanctity of the act of artistic creation].
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 15 / 28
Discussion 5: The Founders had an answer
Copyright – in fact, most IP law – in the United States stems from Article I, Section 8 of
the US Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact laws
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Here, the Founders were following classical liberalism14 by assuming that creators could
be seduced to greater creative production of Science and useful Arts by the lure of
monopoly profits, for limited Times, coming from their ownership of the intellectual
property in their respective Writings and Discoveries.
14
Not to be confused the the more modern neoliberalism, which much more relentlessly thinks of everything in human life in purely market terms and
which is the “free-market fundamentalism” behind many of today’s problems in higher ed and beyond.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 16 / 28
Discussion 5 (cont): But the Founders were not academics
The [neo]liberal view of how to motivate creative activity is, I assert, manifestly in tension
with the longstanding15 values of the academic world, in which world David Wiley’s 5Rs
of Open, that anyone should be able to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute
freely and without seeking the creator’s permission, seem fundamental and self-evident.
So how can we deal with the automatic creation of restrictive and entirely anti-academic
copyrights?
Fortunately, some lawyers were inspired by both Richard Stallman’s GPL license for free
software and by a case they lost which had questioned the constitutionality of the Mickey
Mouse Protection Act, to found the Creative Commons in 2001.
The key legal idea here is to use the powers of copyright to subvert their implications
from within.
15
Don’t mention Pythagoras vs Euclid in this context unless you want to witness an unhinged mathematical rant.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 17 / 28
Activity 6: The sine qua non of a scholarly IP system
Someone shout out the most fundamental required part of an intellectual property
system designed for use, re-use, remix, etc.
There are actually two sides to this:
producers of scholarly work: What do scholars most want to happen with their work?
users of scholarly work: What do we insist of downstream users of scholarly work? [This
should be easy: we tell it to our students all the time, use software systems to detect its
violation, and discipline students when such violations are detected.]
Take a minute to think through and write down some details of this: Who would
have to do what, when, including which components, and in what format, to make this
work?
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 18 / 28
Discussion 6: BY is fundamental
All Creative Commons licenses begin with the phrase “Creative Commons Attribution”
and have the icons and . The most basic license looks in situ like:
This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
[Note that is not the license on these slides: it is merely shown here as an example.]
That word “attribution” is a big part of what we wanted to talk about today!
As mentioned, all CC licenses have the requirement of attribution.
It is a IP-legal, copyright-enforced version of the scholarly norm of giving a citation when
you use someone else’s work:
• if you don’t give a citation to someone else when you use their words or ideas16 , you
have committed an academic sin and may face social consequences (or even get
fired, sometimes...);
• if you use someone’s CC-licensed work in a way that implicates copyright17 without
giving attribution, you and/or your employer can get sued.
16
note ideas are not the subject of copyright, expressions are!
17
so fair use gets you out of this requirement, as does just talking about the name of the work or the ideas within it
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 19 / 28
Those pesky attributions
CC licenses specify what is required in those proper attributions.
Unfortunately, the requirements are described in what is called
→ the license’s legal code, which is sometimes described as “lawyer- but not
human-readable;” see, e.g., the legal code for the CC BY 4.0 license.
Fortunately, CC provides:
← a commons deed for each license, which is intended to be human-readable – see,
e.g., the commons deed the CC BY 4.0 license and
← general guidance pages on its website – see, e.g., the Recommended practices for
attribution).
Unfortunately, the requirements vary between the different versions of the licenses, and
we are now on v4.0!!
Fortunately, CC provides
→ a page which goes into great technical detail on how those those different licenses
differ in their requirements: License Versions
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 20 / 28
How to make awesome attributions
Most fortunately of all, there is an easy mnemonic that will easily guide you to awesome
attributions every time! It is
TASL:
Title: What is the name of the work?
Author: Who owns the work? (Link to their home page if possible.)
Source: Where can it be found? (Provide link if possible, usually via the Title text.)
License: Which license is the work distributed under? (Provide link to
creativecommons.org license legal code.)
Often one puts the link for the Source under the text of the Title.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 21 / 28
An awesome example
For example: this presentation, if you were to copy, distribute, and/or adapt it or some
original expression from it, would need to be attributed. A good TASLing would be:
Awesome Attributions and Lovely Licensing Statements: How OER Practitioners
Can Use Creative Commons Licenses With Style and Substance by Jonathan Poritz
is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
or, if on a poster or somewhere else without good linking capability, this would do:
Awesome Attributions and Lovely Licensing Statements: How OER Practitioners
Can Use Creative Commons Licenses With Style and Substance, found at
[https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS/] by Jonathan Poritz [https://poritz.net/jonathan]
is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/]
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 22 / 28
Some awesome details
A few details to keep in mind:
• If you mess something up with your attribution, you have 30 days after you are
notified of that fact by the rightsholder to fix your mistake ... if the material was
licensed with the 4.0 license suite. If not, you are immediately in violation of their
copyright and this can cause troubles. [Cory Doctorow wrote about “Copyleft trolls”
using this for evil.]
• If you are sharing an adapted version of someone else’s CC-licensed work, which is
allowed by some but not all CC licenses, your attribution statement must say how
you have changed their work.
• If the rightsholder doesn’t want their name on your work, or wants you to attribute
them in a particular way, they can tell you.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 23 / 28
Lovely licensing statements
What about on the other end of the production: putting a CC license on your work.
Note: it’s important that it is your work, or work for which you are the rightsholder,
otherwise you cannot put a CC license on it!18
Basically what you have to do is give your reusers/remixers enough information so that
they can TASL you!
That is, make sure the following appear on your work:
• your name
• the name of the work
• the license you are applying to the work
• the link to the license’s legal code (that’s a legal requirement)
• some text that says something like “work released under this license”
18
despite what the YouTube help page about CC licenses says – even the big boys like Google mess this up sometimes!
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 24 / 28
Lovely details
To make things easier for your reusers (that’s the whole point of CC licensing!), also
include
• the license logo/icon image, like:
• the text might actually say “work released under this license except where otherwise
indicated”
• where you want your to be found on the internet
• your home on the internet
The last two bullets above often skipped, but are nice.
Folks often include just the logo/icon image and that is absolutely not enough!
The phrase “except where otherwise indicated” helps if your work includes other works
within it, by fair use or because they are in the public domain or are under CC license,
and it tells reusers/remixers to be careful of those other embedded work which may have
other licenses.
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 25 / 28
A lovely license example
The licensing statement on the title page of this slide deck was:
This slide deck, except where otherwise indicated, is by Jonathan Poritz and is released under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
(The title was evident because it was there on the title page!)
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 26 / 28
Resources
Creative Commons:
• main site: creativecommons.org
• FAQ: creativecommons.org/faq
• license chooser: creativecommons.org/choose
• marking your work with a CC license: on the CC wiki here.
• information on the fantastic19 on-line course leading to a Certificate of Mastery in
Open Licensing: certificates.creativecommons.org
Misc:
• the Open Attribution Builder from another state (Open Washington)
• my own Copyright Cheat Sheet for University Faculty
• my own Creative Commons Cheat Sheet for University Faculty
• my own New Charts for Adaptation and Remix on licensing considerations for
adaptations, and for remixes of more than one prior work simultaneously
19
But I’m biased: I’ve taken the course, become a Master, and now instruct it – sign up and maybe you’ll be in my section!
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 27 / 28
Discussion and contact info
Discussion!!
Contact info:
Email: jonathan@poritz.net ; Fediverse: @poritzj@mastodon.social .
Get these slides at poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS.pdf and all files for remixing20 at
poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS/ .
If you don’t want to write down that full URL, just remember
poritz.net/jonathan/share
or poritz.net/j/share
or poritz.net/jonathan [then click Always SHARE]
or poritz.net/j [then click Always SHARE]
or scan −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−→
[then click Always SHARE]
20
subject to CC-BY-SA 4.0
https://poritz.net/j/share/AAaLLS Awesome Attributions & Lovely Licensing Statements 2 Dec 2022, Open Oregon 28 / 28