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SCENARIOS - WIKIS AND IMAGES

Roger is a Lecturer in the School of Art responsible for the course HUSO2186 – Art History and Theory 1. Roger has been using the Learning Hub for two years in order to provide to supplementary online resources for his course. Roger has decided to implement Campus LX and use the wiki component to encourage his students to collaborate and discuss the concepts presented to the students during face to face lectures.

Roger envisages that students will draw from a number of sources that include the internet, and published texts to use images as discussion points.

This week’s lecture topic centered on the portrayal of woman during the renaissance period of art history. At the conclusion of the Lecture Roger has asked to students to upload images of artistic works on the portrayal of women during the renaissance period.

What copyright are the copyright considerations Roger’s students need to consider before they begin to upload images to the HUSO2186 campus wiki?

STUDENT SCENARIO DISCUSSION

Rogers’s students are provided with Fair Dealing provision within the Copyright Act that allows for the use of copyright works for the purposes of research and study. Research and study is defined to mean undertaking a course of study. It is important to remember that the fair dealing provisions only apply whilst the students are undertaking the course of study. Therefore, once the current intake of students have completed the course the copyright works used under the fair dealing provisions must be removed from the wiki site.

The students undertaking the Art History and Theory course are able to rely upon using artistic images from the internet and published text under the fair dealing provisions. The fair dealing provisions also allow for the students to format shift the artistic works from the published editions into an electronic form.

Each artistic work uploaded to the wiki environment must be credited/attributed back to the original creator and the URL of where the image was sourced from. With respect to the images taken from the published editions standard referencing practice must be used.

Roger needs to ensure that once the students have completed the course the images must be removed from the wiki environment. If Roger wished to continue to use the wiki for future students then Roger must ensure that he contacts the Copyright Management Service to secure permission to leave the images within the wiki environment.

Fair Dealing/ Fair Use Information Guide- http://mams.rmit.edu.au/p4lxi4b5qzqv1.pdf

The majority of the artistic works produced during the renaissance period would no longer be covered by copyright, as copyright would have expired on the work. Yet in order to rely on using one of the artistic works from this period the student would need to photograph the original work. If the student wanted to rely on using an existing photograph of the work sourced from the internet or from RMIT’s electronic image databases, then the fair dealing provisions listed above need to be relied upon.

Copyright Duration Information Guide: http://mams.rmit.edu.au/vylfzlms8d0x1.pdf

Wikipeida contains a range of artistic works that can be found at the wiki commons page these works can be used freely as long as the wiki commons licence in place is adhered to. There are a range of licences found within the wiki commons such as creative commons licences, General Public Licences GPL, or the

GNU free document licence, and works that have been dedicated into the public domain. The wiki commons also contains images where the copyright on the work has expired. The copyright details on images found within the wiki commons can be found by clicking on the image. If you intend to rely upon using works from the wiki commons then you need to ensure that you clearly understand the terms of the licence.

Wiki commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

A Google image search on artistic works from the renaissance period will provide students with a wide variety of images for use. An important note is that Google doesn’t hold copyright in the images found within a Google image search, the Google search engine searches across the internet looking for references to the key words that have been used as the search terms, and draws back into Google the images found as a result of the search. Each image found is actually sourced from an internet site somewhere with the web. You must track back to establish the internet site of where the image is being used, and establish from the website the usage rights attached to the work.

Below is an example of a Google image search on renaissance painting, from the Google search I have clicked on the image and it has taken me to the screen below. Circled in red is the website of where the image can be located.

Wikis and Images

To establish to the usage rights on the work, you must go to the original site and check the copyright statement or terms of use or terms and conditions of the website to establish the allowable usage rights such as can be used for educational purposes.

If the site explicitly states the image can be used for educational purposes the image can be downloaded in used within the wiki.

The Copyright Management Service is a service that is able to help Roger and his student navigate the murky waters of copyright, terms of use and using images within wiki environments. When in doubt Roger and his students can contact the Copyright Service for advice and assistance.