Last time, in part two of “Where Social Media, Copyright, and Attribution Converge,” we looked at tools available to the copyright holder to manage his rights, the limitations on copyright, and introduced the Copyleft-movement license. This time, we will delve, a little, into the licenses available to the social media publisher, the blend of public domain and licensed works in use, and the ramifications for infringing a copyright.
In general, works are either in the public domain or licensed. So, works in the public domain are free for use, attribution is recommended. Licensed works are of two types free and non-free. Free licenses do not require royalties, but attribution is required along with other stipulations; they are divided into permissive and Copyleft licenses. Non-free licenses require royalties and are roughly divided into noncommercial, proprietary, and trade secret, in this case, the work is not available to the public:
| Free | Non-free | |||||
| Public domain & equivalents | Permissive license | Copyleft (protective license) | Noncommercial license | Proprietary license | Trade secret | |
| Description | Grants all rights | Grants use rights, including right to relicense (allows proprietization, license compatibility) | Grants use rights, forbids proprietization | Grants rights for noncommercial use only. May be combined with share-alike. | Traditional use of copyright; certain rights may or may not be granted | No information made public |
| For software | PD, Unlicense, CC0 | BSD, MIT, Apache | GPL, AGPL | JRL, AFPL | Proprietary software, no public license | Private, internal software |
| For other creative works | PD, CC0 | CC BY | CC BY-SA, FAL | CC BY-NC | Copyright, no public license, CC BY-ND | Unpublished |
–Copyleft. in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft CC BY-SA 4.0
Proliferation in the use of third-party content by Social Media Publishers
Social media publishers use a mix of original content and borrowed work, i.e., copyrighted and public domain works; but primarily borrowed works have become the norm in publishing on social media. Notably, some publishers make the effort to produce derivative works, e.g., remixed audio, as simple as changed spelling in names, or styling of images. Considered differently, images and text are the most used content but also audio, increasingly video, and animation are common. Explicitly, there are no exceptions to digital media format requiring attribution.
Copyright Violation Consequences
Therefore, if a social media publisher infringes the copyright or fails to make attribution to a content creator that publisher can become subject to various remedies ranging from abrupt post removal by the social media platform, subjection to a lawsuit, the presentation with a bill for royalties, even criminal charges for repeated infringement, and issuance of a “takedown notice” by the platform or from the copyright holder.
A takedown notice or notice of takedown is the response of the social media platform or website to accusations of breach of copyright or a court order. In addition, the notice can also be for such things as libel or illegal content. The offending content is removed by the platform following a notice. Takedown notice is instituted as part of limited liability or safe harbor provisions for platforms in the European Union and the United States.
–-Richard Thomas
