Rudaí 23 #thing19: Intellectual Property and Copyright Laws

Flickr CC Photo by Mike Seyfang

I've come across issues surrounding intellectual property and copyright laws at various times during the course of my library experience. The first time I became fully aware of copyright legislation and its complexity was during the MLIS in UCD. An assignment involving the investigation of copyright restrictions in Ireland caused heated debates in the class and resulted in widely differing answers, depending on how the legislation had been interpreted by each of us. My next experience of copyright laws occurred when I was writing blogs for the IFI. I conferred carefully with the head of the Irish Film Archive to make sure that any film stills I used in the blogs were covered by fair dealing provisions. All images had to be accompanied by an acknowledgement identifying the author and title of the work, as well as the date the material had been copyrighted. To be honest, it seemed the more I learned about copyright laws the less I understood so I looked forward to learning more about it for this task. 

When writing the Rudaí 23 blogs, I have used images from Flickr, basing the attribution I gave the images on best practice when blogging as outlined in The Daring Librarian post highlighted in thing 6. I have given attribution to the creator of the image by adding text or a caption to the picture itself but I understand now that this isn't going far enough, as outlined in the Creative Commons attribution guidelines. I also need to link back to the creator's website where possible, include the original title of the image and the type of creative commons license involved. Realistically then I need to add a credits and references list at the end of each blog post which gives this information to readers. I checked back on my blog posts and discovered that I had modified an image I had used without identifying my changes, so I will need to edit that attribution. It was valuable to have Public Domain material defined clearly as well as the various Creative Commons licences. When using Flickr to source images from now on I will filter the images by licence type, depending on whether I want to modify the image or not, or in what context I'll be using it. I used Pixabay for the first time for this task to source the Public Domain picture below. Though it clearly states on Pixabay that under the CC0 Public Domain license no attribution is necessary for this image I've added the attribution information anyway for the purpose of this task. It'll be great to have a resource other than Flickr to draw from when I am sourcing pictures in the future.

Pixabay Public Domain photo by geralt

Another issue that this task has raised for me is that of making sure that I am complying with the social media policies of the various organisations I work and volunteer for. In my Blogger, LinkedIn and about.me accounts I identify myself as working for St. Patrick's College and Fingal County Council and as volunteering for the Irish Film Institute. The social media policies of the various organisations state that a disclaimer should be added to any personal social media accounts in which you identify yourself as an employee of the organisation. This makes it clear that any views expressed by you are personal views and do not reflect those of the organisation. I have added this disclaimer to my Blogger profile and will do the same with any of my remaining social media accounts in which I identify my employer.

Credits and References

"Copyright Symbols" by Mike Seyfang is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

"Share it don't be a Scrooge" by geralt is licensed under CC0 1.0