Questions - A project has some presentation slides which contain images freely available on either the European commission’s website or Wikimedia commons – is it enough to embed a link back to the relevant copyright statement and source?
Response
In short where the institution does not own the copyright in materials and where the copyright period has not expired, permission, a licence or a statutory exception will be required to include the resources in the OER without potentially infringing copyright.
In licensing the OER, you can only embed the appropriate CC licence that applies. Where copyright is owned by the institution then this poses no problem. However, where there are third party works included that are not licensed to end users under the same terms as the rest of the OER, then this must be made apparent to the end user.
Ideally, the best situation for the institution is where materials are already licensed under the same creative commons licence to be attached to the OER, then the CC licence can be embedded in the normal way within the OER, as a whole. In this case you can frame the wording of your metadata or legal notice to that effect.
However, where the licence attached to the image etc is not the same as the OER CC licence (e.g. BY-NC-SA) then permission will be required to license it in that way (BY-NC-SA) or, where permission is not granted, a different licence will require to be embedded within that particular resource and made clear to the end user.
So, where the licence for the map, image etc. is not the same as the actual CC embedded within the OER, it would be preferable that, the item itself is stamped with the licence that applies to it as the onus remains on the licensee, sub licencee, to make the licence details available to the end users and that the resource will then not become detached from the terms attached to it. This will prevent ambiguity and make it unnecessary for the end user to have to click through the url and find, read through the licence.
Every source that is included will, of course require appropriate attribution.
Having looked at the legal notice provided by the European Commission regarding copyright, it states:
“Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated. Where prior permission must be obtained for the reproduction or use of textual and multimedia information (sound, images, software, etc.), such permission shall cancel the above-mentioned general permission and shall clearly indicate any restrictions on use” - http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm.
So, the EU material, or a part of it, can be copied and placed into the OER as long as the source is acknowledged. Where you wish to use a resource that has a licence statement differing from this, the conditions of that licence will have to be adhered to. The map, here, can therefore be copied and placed into a PowerPoint slide for the openly available presentation. However, the legal notice above does not mention ‘derivatives’. As this is an exclusive right of the copyright owner (to make derivatives of a work) this means that legally, you cannot attach the ‘share alike’ provision of the licence to this resource without permission.
The best option here would be to contact the Commission and ask for permission to make and share derivatives. Another option would be to include the work but make a clear and evident statement that the user has the right to reproduce only.