Kulturskatter på nätet/en/Glossary

This glossary is not complete, but it explains some of the most commonly used terms in the topic of copyright on the internet.

NOTE: This glossary is based on Swedish copyright law. The copyright laws in your country may vary.

CC-BY

CC-BY is an abbreviation for Creative Commons, Attribution, which is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses. You can disseminate the material and must then credit the rights owner. More information about Creative Commons-BY.

CC-BY-NC-ND

CC-BY-NC-ND is an abbreviation for Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Non-Derivative, which is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses. You can disseminate, but not change, and not sell the material, and you must credit the rights owner. More information about Creative Commons-BY-NC-ND.

CC-BY-NC

CC-BY-ND is an abbreviation for Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, which is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses. You can disseminate, but not sell the material and you must credit the rights owner. More information about CC-BY-NC.

CC-BY-ND

CC-BY-ND is an abbreviation for Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Derivative, which is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses. You can disseminate, but not change material and you must credit the rights owner. More information about Creative Commons-CC-BY-ND

CC-BY-SA

CC-BY-SA is an abbreviation for Creative Commons, Attribution, Share alike, which is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses. You can disseminate, change and sell the material, and you must credit the rights owner and license the material in the same way. More information about Creative Commons-BY-SA.

CC-BY-NC-SA

CC-BY-NC-SA is an abbreviation for Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share alike, which is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses. You can disseminate and change but not sell the material, and you must credit the rights owner and license the material in the same way. More information about Creative Commons-BY-NC-SA.

CC0

CC0, or CC Zero, is one of Creative Commons' copyright licenses that means that you give up all your rights to the material, something that is similar to public domain. CC0 is sometimes described as "no rights reserved". More information about CC0.

Copyright law

Copyright law, which in Sweden is called "Lag (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk" is a law that regulates how material can be reused. The full text can be found on the government legal website and at Lagen.nu. A commented version of the copyright law is in Olsson, Henry. Upphovsrättslagstiftningen. En kommentar. 3. uppl. Stockholm: Norstedts Juridik, 2009. ISBN 978-91-39-01492-8.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is an international organization that have created a series of copyright licenses with texts that are meant to be read by the public (rather than by lawyers).

Digitization

Digitization can mean many things, from providing the public with internet access to making books and other materials available via the internet. Here we are using the term digitization to mean "making material accessible via internet". To scan or photograph material and turn it into digital form is thus not enough, since the public do not have access to it.

Europeana

Europeana is a portal for material that has been digitized by hundreds of European cultural heritage institutions.

Orphan work

Orphan works are material where there is no certain way to tell who created it or who has the rights to it. For example, it can be very hard to determine age and therefore copyright status of an image that is found in an archive without enough context from other material. For more information on how to handle this situation, see What can we do?

Metadata

Metadata is information about material, for instance creator, year of creation, rights owner, "tags", etc. Without metadata it's very hard to find the material, and impossible to ascertain its copyright status. For this type of queestion, see orphan work

Open access

Open access are scientific texts that are published on the internet without paywalls. Open access is part of the universities' task of spreading their findings to the rest of society.

Open data

Open data is a movement to get more public institutions to release data and metadata, that can then be reused to create apps or websites, either by themselves and together with other datasets.

Paywall

Paywalls are a sort of technical solution to demand money for access to material which otherwise is not accessible (on the internet).

Photographic image

The difference between on the one hand photographic images and photographic work on the other is how long they are protected by copyright. A photographic image is subject to the copyright law for 50 years after it was first published. Photographic images taken before 1969 are in the public domain. There are no artistic demands on photographic images, except that they should reach the threshold of originality.

Photographic work

The difference between on the one hand photographic works and photographic images on the other is how long they are protected by copyright. A photographic work is subject to the copyright law for 70 years after the creator's death. To count as a photographic work, the material has to have a certain artistic value.

PSI

PSI is an abbreviation for Public Sector Information, which is a EU law to increase transparency and make it easier for citizens to use materials that have been produced by the public sector.

Public domain

When material reaches the age where it's no longer protected by copyright, it is said to be in the public domain. That means that anyone can do whatever they want (almost). Swedish law does not have the term in a legal sense. To make it clear that material is in the publc domain, you can mark it with the public domain mark.

January 1st, each year, people celebrate "Public domain day" since creators who died more than 70 years ago are no longer protected by copyright and their works become public domain.

Threshold of originality

For material to be subject to the copyright laws, they need to be specific enough to reach the threshold of originality. That means that the material "shall be the result of an intellectual, creative activity that is so individual that two persons, independently of each other, reasonably would not create exactly the same result" (according to Lagen.nu)

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is a sister project to Wikipedia, where all uploaded files (images, sounds, films, maps, etc) are free from copyright, due to age or free licenses. Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can help to build up. Wikipedia exists in roughly 280 different language versions, with their own communities. Wikipedia: http://wikipedia.org

Wikipedian

The people who contribute to Wikipedia with text, images, and other things, are sometimes called Wikipedians. Sometimes the term refer to the Wikipedia community. In some countries, Wikipedians have formed associations called Wikimedia chapters. De som bidrar till Wikipedia med text, bilder eller annat kallas ibland wikipedianer. Ibland används också uttrycket Wikipedia-gemenskapen, eller Wikipedia-communityt. I Sverige har wikipedianer bildat den ideella föreningen Wikimedia Sverige.

Wikipedian in residence

Wikipedian in residence is a collaboration with a cultural heritage institation where a person who has great insight into Wikipedia works as a coordinator or liaison between the institutions and the Wikipedians. The first Wikipedian in residence was Liam Wyatt who was placed on the British Museum.