This is the third post in a series on copyright and blogging in Korea. The first part : “Can I See Your License Please Sir?” on Creative Commons Licensing, can be found here. The second part: “Copyright Vs. Copy-wrong” on The misuse of content can e found here.]
After looking at the pitfalls of misusing other people’s content, and a way of licensing your own work the intention in this third post on copyright and blogging in Korea (and elsewhere) is to give you a few hints and show you some tricks on how you can find content that is freely available for use on your blog, or in any other content you might want to produce.
With this comes the discussion of “Fair use”. In the United States Fair Use has gotten a lot of play over the last couple of years as people strive to use content while some of its owners, or those representing owners (particularly the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the most militant of cases) have been striving to protect it.
From Wikipedia:
Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work
In a nutshell fair use means you can use content to review it, as part of some scholarly exercise or in education, or as part of some other sort of commentary, and you can do so without permission of the author.
It still means that you can’t rip it off in its entirety though, and you certainly can’t make out if it’s your own work and make a buck off of it.
In Korea though, there is, so far, no doctrine of fair use per se and the Korean courts have been very circumspect in acknowledging it. Even though, in law, there are Fair Use-like provisions:
Section 4, Subsection 2 of The Korean Copyright Act 저작권법 outlines all the cases where it is legal to use someone else’s work, and I’ll let you wade through that on your own. (Bearing in mind I have provided you with an English translation). Over all, if you were to keep within US Fair Doctrine, you are unlikely to fall foul of Korean Copyright law.
Another way to get around copyright is to seek out content that has been explicitly labeled as being able to be used freely (remember the Creative Commons?)
In Korea there are a number of Photo services that allow you to use their photos free and you may not even have to link to them, or there may be some minor conditions that you have to comply with. There are three really good sources of photos and images that, as a blogger on or in Korea, you should already know about:
Newsbank (http://free.newsbank.co.kr/) is an excellent up-to-date source of news images free to use from some of Korea’s top news agencies, including Newsis, The Hankyoreh and No Cut News. [한국어]
Stock Exchange (http://www.sxc.hu) is my personal favourite offering a huge range of images under varying licenses. (Requires registration)
Another, and oft overlooked source of free images is Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons) where over 150million images can be searched, not only by subject, but also by license.
Korean blogger Boowoon provides another list of helpful image sources including the likes of Stock Vault and Open Photo.
On the Audio front there is no competition when it comes to “podsafe” music, or music you can put into your podcast. Formally known just as “Podsafe” it is now Music Alley, (http://www.musicalley.com/) brought to the world by Mevio, the company founded by one of the creators of Podcasting and advocate of Creative Commons licensed goodness, Adam Curry. (In The Morning!). Again you will need to register, but it is well worth it for access to hundreds of thousands of tracks that can be used under various licenses.
Finally a word on “Watermarks”, stemming from a comment by Chris, who asks
what should a blogger do when his content / photos is being stolen? Outside of threatening with lots of hot air, is there something that can be done sans lawyer?
Placing a watermark on your images immediately identifies it as your work, and will stop others from nickin’ it so quickly. With written work preventing misuse isn’t so easy, but Google can be your friend. Searches of phrases should return hits to your pages, if you find it elsewhere your first port of call is to contact the site owner and ask them to either remove the content or credit you accordingly.
Image: FreedomforIP under Public Domain
