Last time, in part one of “Where Social Media, Copyright, and Attribution Converge,” we noted that the DCMA enforced the rights negotiated by WIPO but for digital works. This time we note the tools available to the copyright holder to manage his rights. Then we examine the limitations of copyright.
Copyright Holder Tools
Copyright holders have tools to manage their intellectual property. For works usable on social media, watermarks on images, metadata indicators in the media, e.g., in images or video, and online text content plagiarism checkers are common rights management tools. Adding the © symbol and date shows that the holder has a copyright. Other tools generally available to copyright holders include product keys, activation limits, persistent online Digital Rights Management (DRM,) encryption, copy restriction, runtime restrictions, regional lockout, and requirement of specific hardware use.
The social media publisher’s hands are not totally tied
The copyright law provides exemptions for the use of “copyrighted works.” First, fair use limits the rights of the copyright holder by allowing limited use of a copyrighted work without permission, for example, in the case of citation or reincorporation in another work, or notably, for educational purposes. The publisher can obtain the permission of copyright holders for the use of their work. Thirdly, publishers can acquire a license, for a fee, from the copyright holder for the use of their work. A derivative work is the case where a publisher creates a substantially new, separate, and independent work incorporating elements of another original work. The derivative must manifestly be original or authentic. Then, there are works in the public domain for which the intellectual property rights have expired or the copyright holders have expressly declared them freely available to be used by anyone.
Free Arts License and Creative Commons (CC) are a recent and popular class of licenses in the Copyleft movement that makes a creative work freely available for sharing and which requires derived/modified works to be likewise freely available. These licenses usually come with the requirement of attribution to the source work.
