Month: September 2017

Copyright for Pagans: Examples

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There are a number of common confusions about copyright and Pagan uses. Here’s a quick overview. (Want more details about one? Contact me or leave a comment!)

Copyright for Pagans: Common Pagan Situations

Common confusions : libraries and used book stores

Some people wonder why libraries and used books are okay under copyright, when sharing copies of ebooks or other electronic files isn’t.

The short answer is that there’s something called the “first sale doctrine” that covers physical objects, but not digital ones.

One of the reasons for the distinction is that first sale grants some rights to redistribute a copyrighted work, but not to reproduce it (and in our current technology, a copy of a digital file involves a reproduction, even if you later delete the original from your computer.) Libraries and used book stores are working with the same object (either lending it, or selling it) and there is no residual copy left while the material is being loaned or once it leaves the original owner’s hands.

Some parts of the first sale doctrine have gotten attention at the Supreme Court in recent years relating to geographical limits for first sales. These might be of interest if you’re curious about some of the ways copyright can affect trade

(Other confusions about ebook and digital production costs, and about whether making illegal copies hurts people are better left for other posts. They have their own complexities.)

Complicated world : transformative works

Another way things get complicated is the idea of transformative works. This has been a growing area for discussion.

Transformative works take a copyrighted work and adapt it. Parodies are one example, and they’ve been a specific discussion in copyright law and copyright cases for a long time. These days, we also have things like fanfiction and fanvids, memes, mashups, and related concepts to play with.

If you’ve been around the speculative fiction or fannish community for a while, you’ve probably seen lots of examples of this in one form or another: it’s a way of playing with ideas or concepts, without having to create everything from scratch – or of using widely known material to explore new ideas

In a Pagan setting

Different kinds of actions have different implications when it comes to copyright. It’s hard to tell for certain unless we’re looking at specific cases, but here are some common actions in the Pagan community that are probably violations, some that depend a lot on the specifics, and some that are permitted uses.

Quite possibly a violation

Republishing of work without permission without any additional commentary/material. (Permission might include a Creative Commons license.) This would include sharing an entire copy of a work online.

Quoting large portions of a work, even for purposes like review. This would include the core of the work, extensive portions of the work, etc. Generally a few sentences here or there from a work of non-fiction is considered acceptable, especially if it is clearly not the core of the work.

Posting an image to your social media site if you do not know the original source/creator and have permission (either directly or via something like a Creative Commons license.) Some artists are fine if credit is given, others don’t want their work shared like this at all.

Gray areas: depends on the specifics:

Pieces used in ritual (especially public ones) such as chants, invocations, ritual dramas, full rituals from print sources.

These might be covered by implied license – the idea that people shared them in the first place because they wanted them to be shared in the larger community. In these cases, it’s still best to know where they came from, and share the creator’s name/etc.

Spells
Recipes are a complicated situation in copyright law – a list of facts, steps, etc. is generally not copyrightable, but something like a poetry verse in a spell generally falls under copyright.

Spells usually have some components like recipes, and some components (chants, text, descriptive language about what to do or what to focus on while doing the spell) that would be covered by copyright.

Sharing materials in a closed setting like a coven or small group meeting, taking steps to make sure sure they are not shared in openly available sources online.

This falls under some of the educational provisions, which get complicated. In general, if you want to share things year after year, you want to get permission.

Permitted uses:

Putting material in a Book of Shadows (or other personal religious compilation) that is not shared with others (whether in person, through print copies, or online). Including your sources is always a good idea.

Sending yourself an article in email from an online database or website, for your own reference and study. (A copy for yourself is fine. Sharing that copy could be a problem. It’d depend on the source.)

Passing down material through oral tradition. One person talking to another is not a fixed or tangible form.

Casual discussion, review, or comment on works without extended quotations.
“I liked this book because of these things” is just fine. So is “I didn’t like this book.” It’s the quotations that are the copyright issue. Brief quotations in the places where the specific wording matters are generally fine, but extended quotations where you could have summarised or paraphrased can be a problem.

Citing the source for an idea, even if the expression of the idea is new.

For example: you like someone’s approach to the myth of Persephone, but rewrite it entirely in your own words, it is great to rework it, but give credit for the idea. Storytellers and comedians have community customs about how you do this and when it’s important

Linking to a source or document online. Linking does not affect the original, and is not a copyright issue. Note, however, that some sources for Pagan materials online are themselves copyright violations. If you care about this issue, checking out the sources you’re linking to is a great habit to get into.

Using public domain images (i.e. from historical grimoires) to illustrate grimoires, journals, etc. Public domain images are no longer under copyright or never were, and they’re fine to use like this. In general, anything created before 1923 is quite possibly public domain: there are exceptions, but they’re pretty rare.

Some other examples

Ritual planning. 

“Beltane celebrates the coming summer and the love of the God and Goddess” is a general idea.

A discussion of planning a ritual with that idea isn’t under copyright (because it’s not a fixed form). But the actual ritual script, a video of the ritual, or an audio recording of the discussion would all be under copyright law, because they’d be a fixed form.

Creating spiritual images

An artist makes a picture, using a combination of a photograph they took and adding some effects in an image editor. They post it to their social media site. Even though it doesn’t say Copyright Artist Name 2013, it’s still a copyrighted image.

Sharing a ritual text

A Pagan group comes up with a ritual to celebrate the winter solstice. They share it on their website. While they’ve given permission for it to be used by members of the group, they do not give permission for others to copy it to their own sites (distribution or display), only to use it for their own rituals privately.

Photographs of stars and galaxies

Some things are automatically in the public domain. In the US, this includes things created by government or government agencies. For example, all the Astronomy Photos of the Day from NASA (but not necessarily other sources in the APOD site) are public domain because NASA is a government agency.

Coming next

Part 6 of this series will talk more about some common Pagan situations, including some best practices for avoiding copyright issues.

Course launch! You and Your Library

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Welcome to course launch day!

My free course, You and Your Library is now available.

The course

How do you get access? 

Sign up (for free) and get access to all the material. The course is hosted on Teachable.com, but you can download the PDFs and read them anywhere you like.

What’s in it? 

This course is offered because I run into a lot of people who don’t know how libraries work, or all the things they can do

  • Different kinds of libraries and what they offer
  • How to learn more about library services.
  • How to find materials in libraries (and on library shelves)
  • How to explore a collection and find new things.
  • Useful library services you may not be aware of
  • Ways to get access to databases and books at other libraries.
  • A troubleshooting guide to help with some situations people run into.
  • Finding public libraries near you.

The course is divided into 5 parts with some supplemental material, and covers both Dewey and Library of Congress shelf numbers (what they mean and how to use them.)

Other news

Just want announcements of courses and other materials (not this chatty newsletter?). I have a list for that now too.  The announcement list will be very low traffic, just when I have something new.

Sign up for both or either (but I hope at least one of them!)

Coming in the near future

People of the Library : a Pagan-focused and Pagan-friendly guide to library services.

Some of the same topics as You and Your Library but with additional material for common Pagan research needs like useful databases to learn more about, Pagan-specific subject headings, and much more. Sign up for at least one of my newsletters to find out about it when it launches.

This course will cost $10 at launch.

Want to keep up to date?

I have a mailing list for announcements about new courses or other materials I release. Messages here are brief and to the point.

I have a website for my research help and consulting services, Seek Knowledge, Find Wisdom.

And if you’re the sort of person who likes a chattier regular newsletter (every other week) with links, neat things I found online, research tips, and a few things of beauty, I have one of those too.

Got questions?

Use the contact form on my website and I’ll be glad to help with your questions.

Jenett’s quick guide to evaluating information

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I got nudged by a friend to do a ramble about information evaluation. It might have gotten a little away from me.

Basic principles:

  • We all have biases and things we know more about than others.
  • Some people are more up front about this than other people.
  • Ditto goals. We all have them, some people are more up front about them.
  • Be really suspicious of the people who claim they have the absolute truth and are telling you for your own good.

(They probably don’t and they probably aren’t. Especially if you don’t have a preexisting trusting relationship. Real world stuff has fewer absolutes, for one thing.)

Information: A quick guide to information evaluation (image of a fountain pen and blank lined notebook)

Who is this person (or What is this source?)

Start with the basics. Who’s telling you this thing? What’s their background? If it’s a website without an individual author, what do you know about the site?

You may need to file this in “Need to do some more research” but knowing you need to do that is a great first step. First thing: check out the ‘about’ page, or a bio. Usually this will give you some hints on what they’re about and what they care about most.

If you’re not sure where to start with that, try searching the person’s name (plus maybe a term from the topics they write about, if you need to narrow it down) or search on the name of the site. Sometimes adding in words like ‘review’ or ‘about’ will help.

Even just knowing what kind of source this is can help. Personal website? Newspaper that’s actually well-known and reasonably respected (even if you don’t agree with them)? Pocket of internet culture you weren’t previously aware of? Political group hidden behind astroturfing techniques?

I sort things into “Probably reasonably competent”, “Dubious” and “Need more information”, personally.

Probably reasonably competent sources are those I’ve checked out before, and came up reasonably well sourced. I still need to check the specifics here, but they get some starting benefit of the doubt. Dubious sources are those that have come up short before. Everything else gets filed in ‘need more info’.

What are their goals?

Education? Information? Sell something? Share something gorgeous or fun or amusing? Are they trying to persuade you of something?

What do they get out of you believing them and taking them (or their information) seriously? Are they being up front and honest about that?

Here’s an example: sales sites are not the most fun thing ever, but there is something refreshingly honest about “Buy this thing from me and here’s why.” It’s clear what the people want, and usually pretty clear what’s involved in getting it.

On the other hand, a lot of sources in the political realm are trying to persuade you of things, but it’s not always clear what they’re trying to persuade you of. (Or whether they’re not trying to persuade you at all, but are instead signalling to their core base what they care about.)

This is often where you see a lot of vagaries and unsourced information that plays on emotions rather than treating you like the intelligent, thoughtful, considerate person I want to think you are.

Where did they get their information?

This is where we get to the meat of things. People who are saying trustworthy things should give you a way to check, or more information about how they know that.

When we’re talking to a friend, we put what they tell us in the context of all the other things we know about them. They’re reliable as anything with a ride when it’s important, lousy at getting stuff to the post office.

They have a lot of specific experience in dealing with Mercutian rabbits, and the last fifty things they told you about those rabbits turned out to be right, but they’re not nearly so reliable about Venusian wombats. And they’re normally great about Saturnian leopards, but there’s this one weird quirk, don’t trust their grooming recommendations.

When we’re reading a random website, we don’t have that. We can’t put some of what they’re saying in context without more information.

That’s why their sources matter. Do they tell us where they’re getting their info? If it’s unnamed experts and sources, be dubious. (Though there’s a link below with some more about how to evaluate this with more nuance.)

If they claim specific expertise, can you verify that or does it seem in line with what someone with that expertise would say? (If someone claims to be a lawyer or doctor or librarian and says stuff that is way outside what you’d expect, be dubious without more specifics. Maybe a lot more.)

When is this information from? Is this a topic where currency matters a lot? Some topics change fast, some don’t. Sometimes the info that debunks a current thing has been around for a while (so older info may still be helpful in sorting this out.)

What kind of source is this, and is the information presented in a way consistent with quality information in that kind of source? Reputable newspapers don’t generally go in for explicit personal insults or completely unverified sources. (Unless they’re quoting someone who used one.) Less reputable current events sources might.

Expect better of where you go to learn things. If they’re not giving you meaningful information, go to sources that that will. You can do better than speculation and gossip.

Other key tips

Beware of absolutes, especially in complex situations.

There just aren’t that many absolutes in the world. This is especially true when looking at expert statements: few experts will give 100% certainty. If they do, they will likely also be explaining why. Look for that explanation.

If a media source says something absolute, check into what the experts actually said, and what information they looked at to get there. Chances are pretty good the expert was not nearly so absolute about things.

Be dubious of things that are too good to be true, too weird, or too perfect.

Again, the world just isn’t like that very often. The more we realise that we live in a world that has a lot of shades of colour and nuance and different experiences in it, the sooner we’re going to get better at evaluating information effectively and using it well.

Is this a situation where there are strong emotions?

Sourcing is often not the top priority in these cases. Which is understandable, but just because someone’s having emotions all over the place doesn’t mean you have to use everything they tell you as the basis of your decisions.

Emotions don’t mean someone’s wrong, mind you.

It is, for example, pretty reasonable for someone to be emotional about a topic that has a major impact on their daily life, health, safety, family, or religion, if other people are treating it as a purely intellectual discussion. But a story that’s playing on your emotions to make you feel upset or riled up or righteously victorious, you should be suspicious of that.

If emotions are in play, and you’re not in the middle of the discussion, it’s usually better to pause and take a moment to look at what’s being said.

Who has real experience with this thing? Who doesn’t? How does what people are saying match up with other kinds of information you can find or your experience of people or situations? Who has what at stake? Is this a real person who has specific experiences, or is it a made up storm of emotion that’s trying to get you to react a certain way?

Some additional resources:

Here are a few additional links worth reading

This is only a beginning – there are lots of nuanced issues involved in how we find and evaluate information I haven’t even touched on here (like who decides what gets researched that you can refer to later.)

Sharing information effectively

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I’ve been having conversations recently about sharing information, specifically the medium used. Not the complex things, like how you frame something differently, but the simple “When do you share a link? Text? A video?”

(We got into this because of the tendency of some people to link a whole bunch of videos without summaries or other content information as part of discussions – it especially happens with some threads of political discussion, but I’ve seen it on other topics, too.)

This lead me to three questions, a principle, and some discussion.

The questions:

1) Are you switching modes?

2) Are you asking for a chunk of someone else’s time, focus, energy, or attention (beyond what would be a reasonable part of the interaction they’re currently in.)

3) What does this add to the conversation in the place you’re already in?

Here’s the principle. Use material outside the space you’re currently talking in as supporting material, not the core of your contribution. Give people a reason to consider taking time for the content.

If you don’t do that, and you browbeat people for not using a different kind of content in the way you want, well, that’s not an honest discussion, is it? People are going to notice that.

1) Are you switching modes?

I started thinking about this because of someone linking to uncontexted videos in a text-based discussion on a site that is set up for longform text discussion.

But it’s also true if you link to a PDF in a text discussion. If you are on Twitter and link a podcast episode. If you’re listening to a podcast episode or the radio and they reference visual materials. In a short-form text format (texts, Twitter, Facebook) linking to a lengthy news story on another site.

All of these are about switching modes. Sometimes, that’s really appropriate and informative. But if it’s handled poorly, it can leave a bad taste in the mouth. Personally, it makes me less likely to take other things someone says seriously.

Here’s the thing. Handling it well is pretty simple.

If you are switching modes, tell people that you are. Give them a brief summary so they can decide when and how they might want to explore that.

Things to include:

  • What’s the format you’re linking to?
  • Why are you dropping it into this conversation?
  • How much content is it? (Especially for video or audio.)
  • What are the key points, if someone can’t watch/listen/read/access it?
  • Any major accessibility notes. (Is it purely an image? Not captioned? Only auto-captioned?)

You don’t need to be extremely precise about these things: a brief summary will be really helpful in the vast majority of cases.

It can also be very helpful to identify a specific part (particularly in a longer work) that is relevant to the conversation or that you’d like to discuss more.

Example summaries

(All examples entirely made up.)

Video link:

There’s a great video that illustrates this perspective. It’s about 20 minutes, from ExampleUser on YouTube. Auto-captioned, but the speaker is facing the camera. The part most relevant here starts at about 10:30, about the purple rabbits.

 

PDF link:

There’s a PDF that goes into this. About 50 pages, but the opening summary is the part I’m interested in, especially the discussion of how they chose people to interview.

 

Images being discussed on a podcast:

You can find the image from our show notes for this episode on our website, but the important parts are the claws, which are about eight inches, and were used for digging burrows.

 

Linking to a long detailed source:

Much more detail at this link – about 20,000 words. The discussion of previous experience is about a third of the way through, and there’s a significant chunk of citations at the end.

 

Referencing a much longer work (a book, in this case)

I got most of this from a really great book, called Finding All The Things, by Named Author. The book’s quite long, but I found it worthwhile and recommend it to anyone who’s really interested in how our current search algorithms got developed.

 

Audio track

Here’s a version of the song (about 6 minutes) via YouTube. Lyrics on the screen.

 

You can see here that these examples are brief, and should be pretty straightforward to explain if you’re familiar with the content you’re sharing. None of them require extensive additional time on your end , but they’re tremendously helpful to people trying to figure out if they should click through or make time for this, and why.

They also help someone continue the conversation even if they can’t take in that piece of material now (or anytime soon).

2) Are you demanding someone’s time?

People have a lot of things going on in their lives. What those are will be different for each person.

You don’t get to decide how they spend their time. (Unless you’re paying them, or have an agreement about that.)

Often when people won’t click through to videos, or point out accessibility issues, they get a “Well, it’s less time than Game of Thrones” (or whatever the current TV of choice is. (Like people who are poor get the “Well, stop buying a daily cup at Starbucks.”)

That’s making a false equation.

I set out what my day looks like when it comes to information consumption in a previous post. Your day probably looks pretty different, but the point is, there’ll be some things that are easier for you or fit more comfortably in your day, and some that don’t.

(Key points if you don’t want to read that post: I read very fast, so I can consume most written content much more quickly than video or audio. I can listen to some podcasts while at work, but my time to watch video content is pretty limited and it competes with a number of other things I want to do like writing or projects.)

Example : me

If I’m watching a video for content, I want to pay attention to it – and my time for that is pretty limited, both by time slot and by attention. My current backlog of “Video I know I’d like to watch but requires more attention than I can usually manage after work” is currently well over 20 hours, and growing.

So, if you link me to a video, it’s competing with that 20 hours (plus all the other things I’d like to do), but if you give me text, I will get through it much faster.

Other people might be quite different. They might find it harder to get through text, and have an easier time with audio (or a longer commute or a job where they could listen more than I do.)

There are some tendencies, though. Video tends to be least accessible. Someone doing a long commute on public transit might have more time, but they might also have data or battery limits. Someone at home with young kids might not want to expose those kids (or themselves!) to random undescribed content from an internet stranger.

There are also accessibility issues to think about – I’ll get to those at the end of this post.

3) What does this add to the conversation?

People having a conversation in a particular place have probably chosen to spend time in that place for a reason – often because the format and kind of conversation suits them for some reason. Even if it’s not ideal for them, if they spend a bunch of time there, they’ve probably figured out how to make it work for their specific preferences.

(Obviously, many of us are somewhat flexible about this: we may use a format that’s not our favourite because someone we really like talking to strongly prefers it, or needs it. There are reasons I’m hanging out on Twitter more than I used to.)

The people in a space are there because they want to have conversations with the other people there. At least spaces that are focused on conversation (rather than one-to-many content or one-upsmanship.)

The more time you’re asking someone to spend, the more that’s important to remember.

Thinking about proportions

If I’m in a text-based discussion, and the comments are a few hundred words each, each comment is going to take me a minute or so to read. (And most comments will be shorter than that…)

If we’re in the middle of that kind of exchange, and you suddenly want me to watch 45 minutes of video, you’re asking me to spend 20 times as many minutes on your comment as I am on every other comment in the conversation.

If you want me to do that, it’s up to you to tell me what’s so compelling and why it’s worth that significant a proportion of time.

The same thing is true if you want me to read a long PDF, or work my way through a complicated flow chart graphic, or read a bunch of interconnected discussions with many links and hundreds or thousands of comments.

Expecting people to spend 45 minutes of their time on the thing you think is important, when it’s off to the side of the main conversation is unrealistic. People might spend 5, but more than that, and they probably want to know why it matters.

Giving a summary, and a “If you want more, here’s where I got more about that” is a good start.

In other words, use the links and other modes of content as supporting evidence, not your only contribution.

Talking in your own words about what a source or approach does for you is ideal – that’s you talking, and they’re in a conversation with you, directly, not with your video (or audio or PDF or whatever) link.

If you just want to monologue, well, that’s a different thing. Monologues are fine things! But don’t blame people for deciding not to be in dialogue with them, and doing something else with their time.

Accessibility

The final piece of this is that not all types of content are equally accessible.

If someone is an ongoing and active user of a particular site, you can probably assume they’ve sorted out ways of using it that work for them (at least well enough.) If they’re not on the other site you link to, though? Maybe it’s not accessible to them.

Someone might be visually impaired, and not able to get anything out of that really gorgeous but badly described infographic or chart. Or that PDF may be so badly organised it will take as long to navigate it as to get a sense of the content.

Someone might have hearing impairments and the thing you linked to has lousy auto-captioning. Even when the captioning’s okay, it takes extra time and energy for them to figure out who’s speaking and to sort out context cues that others can hear (like background noises, music cues, or who’s speaking.)

Someone may find some sites frustrating or impossible to use for design reasons. They may have medical conditions affected by flashing images or lights, and not want to watch videos without someone checking that’s okay. They may have specific experiences that mean they’re strongly affected by some kinds of content, images, or sounds, and watching those things (especially without warning) will mess them up for hours or days.

Someone may have young kids at home or just not care to listen to some kinds of language or content themselves. (Or at least not without some warning and a chance to prepare.)

Someone may have medical issues that make concentration and focus precious things. They may find it much less tiring to process text than audio or video, or short text compared to longform conversations. Switching from one location to another online often changes these things too.

Someone may get most of their online access from work or school (so some sites may be blocked, or some content could get them in trouble). Others may have limited data or technology access, so they can only watch videos in specific places (and need to balance that against other tasks.) Some people may be in a public internet space and not want to click on unknown sites, or be using a network that has filtering.

You probably know these things about your close friends. (I hope so, anyway!) But you probably don’t know many of them about someone in a given online conversation.

Long story short

Pointing people at undescribed content isn’t a good way to get them to engage with your points. If you care about the conversation, give them some content in the context you’re all currently talking, and take a sentence or three to explain what you’re linking to.

It feels weird to explain this, but clearly, it’s a thing a lot of people on the Net haven’t adequately internalised yet.

Copyright for Pagans : Fair use

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Fair use is a concept in copyright law that is about balancing the rights of the copyright holder with discussion (and exploration of) copyrighted works.

Fair use is what allows us to write book reviews or movie reviews, quote a short bit of a text in an essay, or reference a copyrighted work as part of a lawsuit or other thing requiring documentation.

It’s also what allows (at least some space) for parody songs, filk, fanfiction, fanvids, fan drawings, mashup images, cosplay, and much more.

Fair use is a weird thing. It isn’t set out in detail in law – instead, it is a possible defense if someone sues you for copyright infringement. A court or judge has to decide if your specific case is fair use or not. Unless and until that happens, you don’t know for sure.

This makes it very hard to make suggestions, though there are some educational guidelines (more on that in a minute) and a lot of sites have set limits on what they consider okay for the uses they see.

Courts look at four factors when making their rulings about fair use, but different courts have made very different decisions about similar amounts of material, or how material was used.

This is good place for a reminder that getting permission from the copyright holder is often a great way to avoid this whole question. (Either by getting direct permission, or by using materials that have been licensed for general use through blanket permissions: see the section on Creative Commons below.)

Factors

The four factors courts look at are:

  • How transformative the use is
  • The nature of the copyrighted work
  • The amount and substance used
  • The effect of use on the potential market

People have written books about all of these, so I’m touching on it briefly here, and if you want to dig into it further, the Stanford site mentioned below is a great starting place for a lot more detail aimed at non-lawyers.

Transformative

Have you used the copyrighted work to do something new and interesting? That might favour a transformative use.

Some things courts look for are if you’ve added new meaning by using the work and adding additional material or context. Maybe you’ve used it to make connections between different things.

Fanvids are a great example here: sometimes the song someone chooses and the video clips someone chooses bring out new connections in the existing material, or highlight something that might be lost otherwise.

(Need an example? Parachute by Thingswithwings is a Leverage fanvid that highlights the relationship between three of the show’s characters. And this discussion of the making of a vid for We Didn’t Start The Fire (the Billy Joel) illustrating 50 years of (Western media) fandom by Scribe and Fiercynn talks about some of the creative choices that go into this kind of transformative work, and could not exist without the source material.)

Nature of the work

In general, fiction and poetry (or creative work in general) gets more protection than non-fiction.

This is because sharing of information or information is seen as a key good thing in society, and so there’s encouragement in the law to do it within reason.

(However, sharing the information doesn’t necessarily mean sharing exactly how someone else said it: often it is better from a copyright point of view to give your own paraphrase and tell people where to find the original rather than copy an extended passage.

Copying directly is usually best saved for when you need to discuss specific wording, or are doing a detailed review or analysis where you look at a segment, then discuss it in detail, and then do another section.)

Unpublished works also generally get more protection than published ones. (Because the creator has the right to control how the work is shared in the first place.)

Amount and substance

Basically, the more you use, the more likely it’s going to be considered a copyright violation. Copying the entire thing, usually a problem.

This is why a lot of spaces set a limit like saying you can quote a certain number of sentences or words: it helps give some guidance about what ‘too much’ might be.

It’s not just about the number of pages or words or percent of an image or song, though – it’s also about how core that piece is to the work you’re copying. This is something it’s very hard to evaluate, but it’s a factor the courts consider.

However, parody is a little different here: if the whole work you produce is a parody, you probably have more license in copying memorable bits from the thing you’re using. The relationship to the original work is a large part of what makes the parody recognisable and effective.

Effect on the potential market

A lot of people try to say that their use won’t affect the market. That isn’t something that the user of copyrighted material gets to determine, though. You don’t know all the parts of the potential market like the original creator or copyright holder does.

Basically, though, if you affect the copyright holder’s ability to make money from their work (by providing copies for free, by using their work to create an effective alternative that people buy instead of the original) then you may find yourself having problems with copyright.

Providing citations and acknowledgement

A lot of people think that if you say where the original was from, that will keep you out of trouble.

This is where we come back to the difference between copyright and plagiarism I talked about in part 1. Telling people about the original is a good thing! But it’s not enough to stop a copyright violation if there is one.

Getting permission from the copyright holder, or using material which the copyright holder has agreed to share is a different situation. In that case, credit may still be required as part of the permission or license.

Creative Commons licensing is a method creators can use to give blanket permission for some kinds of uses, and some of the licenses require crediting the original in a specific way.

Educational uses

There are some very general guidelines for educational uses, which means things that look like a structured class This is usually material that is available to a limited number of people (not posted for the entire Internet to access), for the duration of a series of classes (not forever).

Ongoing Pagan classes like seeker, dedicant, or pre-initiate classes can fit into this category, but posting something in public spaces online or using it for a one-time workshop probably would not qualify.

The Stanford site in the resources has an entire section on academic and educational uses that may be of interest.

Resources

Stanford has an excellent and widely referenced site on Fair Use. (However, don’t trust anything you see in the comments without checking it in well-informed and reliable source: a lot of the comments there are just wrong.)

In particular, you might find the summaries of major fair use cases interesting, and they do regular updates on major cases that relate to copyright and fair use.

If you’d like detailed legal explanations, the lectures from class 9 of the CopyX class give an excellent historical and current overview of fair use (and how it got like this) with a lot of examples.

Next

I’ll be digging into more specific examples (and some common confusions) in part 5.

Copyright for Pagans: What is under copyright?

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Welcome back to my series of posts on copyright. This time, we’re going to tackle the question of what is under copyright and what isn’t, with some examples of complicated cases. Here are the parts in this series.

Image text reads: Copyright for Pagans: what is under copyright? (slate background, large green chalk copyright symbol in middle)

Works, not facts or ideas

The first thing to understand is that copyright protects many different kinds of works – books, novels, short stories, theatre, music, poetry, songs, computer software, architecture, among others.

Copyright doesn’t protect facts, ideas, systems, or what are called ‘methods of operation’. However, copyright can protect how those things are expressed.

A common example here is a recipe – copyright doesn’t protect the list of ingredients or the really basic description of how to combine them (that’d be the method of operation). But it would protect a description that went beyond basic instructions, or stories or commentary with the recipe.

Original work

Copyright covers original works in a fixed form.

Original means two things.

1) That it is an independent creation (not a copy of anything else)

2) That there is a modest amount of creativity.

A lot of copyright law is about defining these things.

Without getting bogged down in details at this point, one of the things that is very clear in the law is that you only need a very modest amount of creativity or originality. For example, if you were trying to copy something, and your hand slipped, it could count as an original work.

(A quote from a case in 1951, from Judge Frank, goes “A copyist’s bad eyesight or defective musculature, or a shock caused by a clap of thunder, may yield sufficiently distinguishable variations. Having hit upon such a variation unintentionally, the ‘author’ may adopt it as his and copyright it.”)

One intriguing thing about copyright is that it doesn’t have to be new. (Trademark and patent law care about whether something is new. Copyright doesn’t.)

It’s pretty common for people to have similar sorts of ideas about the same subject. For example, within the Pagan community, two people might independently strike on very similar wording for a chant for a particular ritual or deity focus. In these situations, a copyright case would look at whether they had any knowledge of the other work.

Fixed form

The fixed form part of the definition is a bit easier to explain. Basically, as soon as you have committed the work to a fixed form, it qualifies for copyright if it’s not excluded for other reasons.

This can include:

  • Saving something as a computer file.
  • Taking a photograph.
  • Painting or drawing artwork on paper (or another medium)
  • Writing down music
  • Notating the choreography of a dance or routine.
  • Recording a speech or performance.

What isn’t under copyright?

Some kinds of works can’t be copyrighted. The Copyright Office of the United States has a good summary of Copyright Basics (PDF).

Works that can’t be copyrighted include:

  • Works that aren’t in a fixed form (like a dance that hasn’t been notated or recorded, or an improvised speech that isn’t written or recorded.)
  • Titles, names, short phrases, slogans (these can be covered by trademark in some cases)
  • Listings of ingredients or contents (without other material)
  • Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, principles, discoveries, concepts, etc. (Some of these may be covered by patent law.)
  • Information that is entirely common property with no original content (standard calendars, measurements, height/weight charts, etc.)

In the United States (and a number of other countries), material created by federal or state governments as part of their work is also not under copyright. For example, photographs from NASA used for the Astronomy Photo of the Day are not under copyright, or photos taken by a National Park Service ranger in the course of their job.

This means that laws, congressional actions, government forms, etc. can be shared without worrying about copyright issues.

What is under copyright?

Answering whether a specific work is covered by copyright is a bit harder, because the law has changed several times. There are also different timelines for published works and unpublished ones.

In general, though, anything that was put in a fixed form after 1976 is probably protected by copyright law unless it is specifically exempted.

Material created between 1923 and 1976 might be protected, but it’s often complicated to figure out. During this time, there were a number of more substantial restrictions for how you had to publish materials to get copyright protection, and the copyright had to be renewed.

However, since it’s hard to tell, a best practice is to assume a given work in this time frame is protected unless you can determine it isn’t.

Almost all works before 1923 are now in the public domain (no longer protected by copyright), but there are some occasional odd exceptions.

One of the best known is Peter Pan. J.M. Barrie, the creator, gave the copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, and Parliament passed an act giving it specific extended protection. This article explains the whole long complicated story. There are also sometimes differences between countries: this has affected publications like Sherlock Holmes.

Large gray area

Finally, there’s a large gray area. Copyright law was originally designed to create a balance protecting creators and encouraging innovation.

It’s important to protect creators and make it possible for them to benefit from the time, energy, and materials involved in creating things. Otherwise, many people wouldn’t put that kind of time into it. But it’s also important to allow people to share creations, riff off them (transformative works, we call that now), and use other people’s work to encourage, inspire, or support new innovation and creativity.

For example, what happens when you take a work by a particular artist, and use it in a meme (i.e. as part of a new creation, with added content or context or commentary)?

The case of Pepe the Frog is a very current example, and it’s also a good highlight of some of the issues between US (and UK and Commonwealth countries) approach to copyright law, and continental European approaches to copyright law, which often include more focus on the artist or author’s ‘moral rights’. Here’s an article about Pepe that goes into some of the details.

Copyright law (as I mentioned in early parts) can take a long time to catch up to new technology and new transformative uses that technology allows.

I’ll be digging into more specific examples (and some common confusions) in part 5. Next up, part 4, which will talk about fair use. (Because those examples will make more sense if we talk about fair use first.)