Does any one or group working in the open publishing space have a policy or advice for its authors about whether or not they can or should include embedded videos, in their open textbooks, that are restricted (copyrighted with all rights reserved)?
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Thatās a question for Cable Green, I guess ā¦ but my understanding is that:
- yes you can include short mounts of copyrighted materials in openly licensed books
- if by embedding, you mean embedding from an external service, then it should be find.
I would recommend:
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make sure the videos are āadditionalā to the central text ā¦ the text should work if those vids disappear.
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As long as the videos are embedded from another service (eg Youtube, Vimeo) then:
ā in the case of the webbook there is no violations of copyright (since you are linking to an external service, where the video is hosted and managed, so no copyright violations ā unless the video at the hosting service is in violation)
ā in the case of the exports ā¦ if using Pressbooks, those embedded videos will be transformed into links, so no copyright violation worries.
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Thanks for your thoughts, Hugh. I have already spoken with Cable about this, but was interested to see if anyone besides us is thinking about laying down a clear policy.
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Hi Lauri! Iāll second what Hugh said - from a license standpoint some restricted content can still be included under a global CC license, but how folks actually go about that is important.
We donāt have a specific policy as such, but our general approach to handling restricted content within an open text is to encourage people to be very explicit about it - usually indicating it in/on/near the content itself, and also listing the locations of restricted content in the back matter with other info relevant for folks wanting to remix/adapt etc. (e.g. attribution info). This approach actually goes for anything that differs from the global license (e.g. ND content in a CC-BY text) so that anyone creating derivatives can pinpoint things that they might not want to or be able to use. This is especially important when it comes to things that rely on fair use as different jurisdictions have different policies (although I canāt claim to be an expert on this! Whereās Meredith Jacobs when you need herā¦)
I really like @hughās point about making sure this content is āadditionalā too - good way to ensure that if downstream users canāt or donāt want to use restricted content, the impact isnāt too great on the book as a whole.
Hope this helps!
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Thanks for adding to the discussion, Zoe.
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Iām wondering if @allisonbrown or @hofera have anything to add to this discussion: do either of you have a policy in place already at SUNY or Open Oregon? Or a piece of standard messaging that you share with authors who want to embed videos that are All Rights Reserved in their open textbook?
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I wrote to both @allisonbrown or @hofera privately, as well as Alexis Clifton, who responded that Open SUNY does not currently have a policy regarding this matter. However, Iāll leave it to Allison to expand further if she wishes. I have not heard from Amy yet.
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Thanks for letting us know, Lauri! Have you also reached out to any copyright or OER librarians about the same? Iām thinking that they are often the ones having these kinds of conversations with authors, so even if they donāt have a specific policy for you to adapt/reuse, their input could help inform the development of one.
I donāt have much to add to what has been said, all of which I agree with. To me, one of the main important factors is the nature of the embedding. As Hugh said, if itās embedding like in a link where the video is hosted elsewhere, then there arenāt any issues copyright-wise.
In the textbook series Iām editing, the only things people are including besides text are images, so we havenāt run into this question (and the images have to all be openly licensed of course!).
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