Licensing and copyright
Copyright is a form of intellectual property that allows individuals such as artists, composers and writers to protect their work by giving them certain "exclusive rights". It entitles the copyright owner to a say in how a work is used when it is reproduced by other people.
Copyright will exist in any original work that you produce as part of your research and applies the moment an original work is created. Goldsmiths has an Intellectual Property Policy which sets out the legal rights you will have in the work you create as an employee.
Defining and protecting intellectual property rights in practice research can be complex. Practice research is often collaboratively produced and can make use of multimedia documentation which can have particularly complex copyright and licensing implications. The DACS website has tailored guidance on copyright for artist and creators.
Copyright and depositing to GRO
You are able to upload copyright-free full text material to GRO (i.e. text or multimedia material for which you hold the copyright, or which you have cleared permissions from the copyright owner).
Potential copyright holders, apart from yourself who you may need to contact to clear permission, include photographers, museums, archives, galleries, picture agencies or publishers.
We have a copyright decision-making workflow guide for practice researchers who want to upload text or multimedia content to GRO. The resource guides depositors through the steps we recommend practice researchers take to ensure the content they wish to make available on GRO is suitable for deposit.
Creative Commons Licensing
Creative Commons Licensing is a system of licences for digital content. They provide a way for creators to licence the use of material they create and share. Creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work. Researchers have the option to specify a Creative Commons licence on the files that they upload to GRO.
Creators can build a license which suits their needs and authorise the appropriate use of their work. There are six main licences; the more letters in the licence, the more restrictive it is:
CC BY (Attribution Licence): anyone can reuse the work as long as attribution is made to the original creator of the work (i.e. they must cite the original work). This allows maximum dissemination, and it enables all kinds of academic, commercial and creative reuse while giving appropriate credit to creators.
CC BY-SA (Share Alike): the work can be reused for all kinds of purposes, but any newly created work must also be shared under the same licence (e.g. you could not create a new work and then issue it under a more open or more restrictive licence).
CC BY-ND (No Derivatives): the work can be reused as is, without modification. This might be useful if the integrity of the original work is important.
CC BY-NC (Non-Commercial): all kinds of reuse are permitted as long as they are for non-commercial purposes.
CC BY-NC-SA (Non-Commercial, Share Alike): re-use is permitted only for non-commercial purposes; any newly created work must be shared under the same licence.
CC BY-NC-ND (Non-Commercial, No Derivatives): the most restrictive CC licence. It only allows others to freely download and redistribute the work for non-commercial purposes, but not modify or build upon it for any purpose.
The licences allow other people to know how to use a work in an appropriate way without infringing copyright, ensuring creators get the appropriate credit. Creative Commons licences do not replace copyright; they let users of digital works to know what they can and cannot do with that content. It protects the rights of creators, while helping them achieve wide distribution of their work.
You can specify a Creative Commons licence on files that you upload to your GRO records that allows other people to know how to use the materials in an appropriate way without infringing copyright.
Creative Commons Licensing in Practice Research
Practice research is often collaboratively produced and can make use of multimedia documentation which can have particularly complex copyright and licensing implications.
Creative Commons licencing will not be appropriate for every practice research project, but many practice researchers have found that making their work openly available under a Creative Commons licence is the most efficient and ethical route for sharing practice research outputs.
In the UK, a creative work does not need to be labelled with a copyright symbol or other mark to be copyrighted – copyright is automatic when a creative work is created. The clear badging provided by Creative Commons has the benefit of making a work visibly copyrighted which can help to communicate copyright ownership and conditions of use to anyone globally. A Creative Commons license clearly specifies what can and cannot be done with the resource, providing a clear visual mark on online digital objects such as images, films, recordings or writing.
Creative Commons Examples
Creative Commons licencing underpins the system of open access publication and is now commonly used to licence journal articles, monographs, edited collections, PhD theses and research datasets. The licences can be used for any digital content, but they have only recently started to be applied to licence work produced by practice researchers in the visual and performing arts.
In addition to institutional repositories such as GRO which have been the cornerstone for preserving practice research outputs and making them discoverable, there are many interesting examples of practice researchers making their work available through new open access platforms with a Creative Commons licence. A selection of these is listed in the 'practice research journals' section of this guide.
Several UK universities, such as the Edinburgh College of Art, have made a selection of their practice research portfolios available open access under a Creative Common licence.
Many museums and cultural heritage institutions are starting to make images from their collection available under a Creative Commons licence. The Association for Art History has created a list of prominent institutions releasing their content using Creative Commons licensing.
The Creative Commons website has a list of music communities and record labels that are utilising open licensing tools in a variety of ways.
Artists have now started to experiment with using Creative Commons licensing as part of their practice. The artist Francis Alÿs licences his films with the CC BY-NC-ND licence and has spoken about the benefits that Creative Commons licensing brings to his work. There is a post on the Goldsmiths Library Blog that explores Alÿs’s engagement with Creative Commons licensing in more detail.