3 Copyright: Transferrable and Licensable
Because creator’s rights are protected by national copyright legislation, such as the Copyright Act in Canada, anyone else who wants to do an action that is protected (i.e. publish a work) must get permission from the copyright holder. The way this is done is through assigning (a.k.a. giving away) copyright or licensing rights.
How this works for creators
Copyright and licensing is at the heart of all publishing agreements. When a publisher agrees to publish an article you’ve submitted, or a book manuscript that you’ve been shopping around, they will ask you to sign a publishing agreement (which is also sometimes called an author contract). This is because under copyright law the copyright holder is the only one who can exercise the rights in copyright, but by getting the copyright holder to agree to a license or to agree to assign their copyright, they are free to exercise the right to publish. In a contract you’ll likely be asked to either:
- assign copyright (meaning that you are no longer the copyright holder, the publisher is), or
- license some, or all, of your rights to the publisher.
Both of these are the “authorizing” that the Copyright Act talks about. If you license some or all rights to a publisher, you remain the copyright holder, but the publisher still may be the only ones who can exercise the rights in the contract.
When licensing, there are exclusive licenses (where only the party named in the license can exercise the rights), and non-exclusive licenses (where the copyright holder can grant as many parties the rights in the license as they want). It’s also possible to split the rights, and license only some but not others. For example, you could grant a publisher an exclusive license to publish in English, but reserve the translation rights.
How this works for users of copyrighted works
If you are using works that are protected by copyright, you will need to either:
- be using them in a way that is allowed through a copyright exception,
- have received permission from the copyright holder for your use, or
- you will need a license
When thinking about licenses, if you’re associated with a university, chances are your library will hold licenses to many journals, databases, and other resources, which they negotiate with the publishers or aggregators. They will let you know which uses are allowed, often spelled out in the catalogue record for the material. However, there’s another alternative, which is openly-licensed content. Open licenses exist to let you, the user of the work, know what you’re allowed to do, and those rights are granted to all members of the public provided they follow the requirements laid out in the license. Creative Commons (CC) is one of the most recognized open licenses, and we will spend the next couple of sections covering CC licenses.