Avoid text-heavy blog entries and/or dress up your website with multimedia used according to the creators’ specifications.

Here are free resources you can use, including some of my favorite go-to sites such as Everystockphoto, Stock.XCHNG, and Creative Commons-licensed images that can be found using search engines and Flickr.

I hadn’t seen this wiki before of copyright-friendly resources from teachers and librarians.  It contains a number of government and non-profit organization sites.

See Mashable’s post for the complete list including a number of free audio sources such as the Internet Archives’ open source audio.

Tynt’s Tracer sounds like an interesting and potentially useful free tool.  When content from your website is highlighted and copied, Tracer automatically adds a link back to the original page that is copied.  For instance, when I copied and pasted the bulleted information below from Tynt, the attribution info came with it:  “Read more. Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives.”

Tynt says that you can use it to:

• Generate more visits and page views.
• Get credit when content is copied from your site.
• Measure and understand user engagement.
• Improve your search engine ranking.

Creative Commons featured the Tynt Tracer tool in a blog post and I saw it referred to here, as well.  The tool adds a “few lines of JavaScript that automatically add license and attribution information to a user’s clipboard when they copy text.”  One could remove the code, but it does make attribution convenient.

Tynt answers the question, “Why Tracer?” and gives information about how to add Tracer to your blog, with specific instructions for the most popular types such as Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and more.

Google’s Public Policy Blog is attempting to answer questions about the Google Book Search settlement and what it means for readers as it expands access to books in the U.S.

Authors and publishers with questions should visit the settlement Notice website.

Here’s some basics of the settlement:

• When you find the book you’re searching for, you’ll be able to preview 20% of the book over the Internet from anywhere in the U.S. If you want to look at the whole thing, you’ll be able to go down to your public library where there will be a computer station with access to the whole book for free. And if you don’t want to leave home or want a copy for yourself, you’ll be able to purchase access to an electronic copy of the book. As always, if the book is old enough to be in the public domain, you’ll be able to download the whole book for free.
• If you’re at a university, in addition to your libraries’ free access points, your school can obtain an institutional subscription that gives you access to most books that we’ve scanned. And scholars and students who don’t keep the same study hours as the library will be able to look at any book, anywhere, any time.
• If you are vision impaired, the settlement will open a world of books to which you’ve never had access. Visually impaired people will be able to search for books through the Google Books interface and purchase, borrow, or read at a public library any of the books that are available to the general public in a format that is accessible to the vision impaired.
• If you want to read in foreign languages, you will have access to tens of thousands of more books than you have today. Books in Spanish add up to almost 10% of the books already scanned. If you account for the difference in numbers between books in Spanish and English, the usage per book in Spanish is more than three times what it is for books in English.

“The settlement won’t just expand access to out-of-print books, either.  Because authors and publishers will have the ability to let users preview and purchase their in-print books through Google Book Search, readers will have even more options for accessing in-print books than they have today.”

Creative Commons, a non-profit organization founded in 2001 to encourage copyright reform and provide a legally-sound licensing framework for works that could be freely redistributed, raised more than $500,000 in its latest fundraising campaign, despite the economic downturn.

Ars technica calls Creative Commons one of the most prominent organizations involved in the free culture movement, pointing out that the Creative Commons licenses and file metadata scheme are increasingly popular and have been adopted by a diverse group of artists and writers ranging from the music group Nine Inch Nails to science fiction novelist Charles Stross.

The Creative Commons mission is to encourage creators to allow for legal sharing, remixing, and reusing of their works.  The organization provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.

Ars technica says that the mission is more relevant than ever, and the support of donors “reflects growing recognition of the need for copyright reform and the value of unencumbered sharing.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) continues its suggestions for “how the new leadership in Congress and the White House can restore some of the civil liberties we’ve lost over the past eight years.”

We previously covered the first in the series which was on privacy rights and surveillance.  This post focuses on innovation, fair use and intellectual property.

The EFF believes that balance has been lost in the area of copyright.  Powerful entities trying to maximize their intellectual property rights “have run roughshod over the people’s fair use rights.”  In an age of user-generated content, this is particularly problematic.  They offer some suggestions:

• Repair the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) so that copyright holders do not get statutory damages for noncommercial violations, and more along this line.
• Reform the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), emphasizing its role to promote, rather than impede, innovation.
• Don’t let the content industry use our government resources to pressure universities and others to participate in their “intimidating” peer-to-peer dragnet operations.
• Show caution before regulating the use of technologies that limit consumer choice or consumer rights.

A teleconference today will discuss a settlement agreement (PDF) between Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers on behalf of a broad class of copyright holders.

The deal would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search, notes TechCrunch.  The settlement is still subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Guild had sued Google in September 2005, after Google struck deals with major university libraries to scan and copy millions of books in their collections.

Google says that once the settlement has been approved, “you’ll be able to purchase full online access to millions of books.  This means you can read an entire book from any Internet-connected computer, simply by logging in to your Book Search account, and it will remain on your electronic bookshelf, so you can come back and access it whenever you want in the future.”  Many of the books are otherwise out-of-print.

Bush signs law creating Copyright Czar
Congress sent the White House the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act (.pdf), a measure creating a cabinet-level copyright czar, which President Bush signed on Monday.  The Czar will be charged with “implementing a nationwide plan to combat piracy and report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs,” says Wired Blog Network.

The czar is not likely to be appointed until after the elections.  Image from Wikipedia.

Google loses German copyright cases over image-search thumbnails
Google lost two copyright lawsuits in Germany over displaying photos and artworks as thumbnails in a preview of search results, reports Bloomberg.com.

A photographer and a comic book creator successfully sued Google in Hamburg, Germany.  The court said in an email,

It doesn’t matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution.  By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created, that may have justified displaying them without permission.

“The conflict highlights disputes over how copyrighted works can be used without an owner’s permission. Web sites such as Google have made it easier for consumers to share such material, prompting artists, publishers and sports leagues to step up efforts to protect their property,” Bloomberg said.

Here are some selected resources related to copyright law and fair use:

• Online Digital Slider for Copyright  From the American Library Association’s Office of Information Technology Policy, the most recent useful tool for determining whether a work is still under copyright.  See image below.
• LLRX resources on copyright  Law and technology resources for legal professionals.
• Checklist for Fair Use (PDF)  From the Copyright Management Center at IUPUI.  IUPUI has other reliable information on copyright.
• Fair Use guidelines  From Dartmouth.
• Fair Use Chart  From Association for Research Libraries.
• Teacher’s Guide to Fair Use and Copyright   “Modeling Honesty and Resourcefulness.”
• Creative Commons (CC)  How creators can share their work but retain some rights.
• How to choose a CC license that works for you.

A study released by a Library of Congress digital information program reviewed the impact of various laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works, reports Library Journal.  Proposals were offered for legislative reform, as well as suggestions for non-legislative solutions.

Suggestions included:

• That countries establish “laws and policies” to encourage and enable the digital preservation of at-risk copyrighted materials and that these apply to “all non-profit libraries, archives, museums and other institutions,” provided they do not seek commercial advantage;
• That preservation laws and policies apply equally to all categories of copyrighted materials, including “literary, artistic, musical and dramatic works, as well as motion pictures and sound recordings;”
• That laws cover all copyrighted materials in all media and formats, “hard copy or electronic, born digital or digitized for preservation;”
• That “preservation institutions” be allowed to actively harvest publicly available content (such as web sites) for preservation purposes;
• That “preservation institutions” be permitted to “proactively preserve at risk copyrighted materials before they deteriorate, are damaged or are lost.

The need for more significant research and discussion was also identified in order to form policies and best practices, including research “on the national level” to determine “whether and under what circumstances access to digital preservation copies can be provided without harm to right holders,” and “to reexamine the interaction between copyright and private agreements as it relates to digital preservation.”

Solutions in the digital preservation arena are increasingly urgent.  LJ notes that although the report recognizes that copyright and related laws as just one obstacle to digital preservation activities, it clarifies that “there is no question that those laws present significant challenges.”

The Center for Social Media at American University’s School of Communication has a report on best practices for making online videos within the boundaries of fair use.  Anyone creating videos that might involve others’ work in some way will find the report informative, guiding them through the copyright law maze, along with the Center’s previous report, Recut, Reframe, Recycle.

Some best practice uses include:

• Commenting on or Critiquing of Copyrighted Material
• Using Copyrighted Material for Illustration or Example
• Capturing Copyrighted Material Incidentally or Accidentally
• Reproducing, Reposting, or Quoting in Order to Memorialize, Preserve, or Rescue and Experience, An Event, or a Cultural Phenomenon
• Copying, Reposting, and Recirculating a Work or Part of a Work for Purposes of Launching a Discussion
• Quoting in Order to Recombine Elements to make a New Work that Depends for its Meaning on (Often Unlikely) Relationships Between the Elements

This guide to best practices does not tell you the limits of fair use rights, they say.  It’s not a guide to using Creative Commons licenses, material that is already free to use without considering copyright, nor to using material that someone wants to license but cannot trace back to an owner — the so-called “orphan works” problem.

The best practices address the most common situations today.  “Inevitably, online video makers will find themselves in situations that are hybrids of those described… or will develop new practices.  Then, they can be guided by the same basic values of fairness, proportionality, and reasonableness that inform this code of practices.  As community practices develop and become more public, the norms that emerge from these practices will themselves provide additional information on what is fair use.”  [via iLibrarian]