ACCESS RIGHTS
Rights of access to the resources of the Resources of the Repository of the Cracow University of Technology (including resources included in the Resources of the Repository of the Cracow University of Technology within the EDT project).
The resources contained in the Repository of the Cracow University of Technology (hereinafter the RPK) are works within the meaning of the Act of February 4, 1994 on copyright and related rights. This means that the use of them can be carried out on the terms set out by this Act and under licenses held by the Repository of the Cracow University of Technology.
The copyright law is a set of rules issued to protect the interests of creators and legal relationships related to the creation of works, using them and the protection of them, sometimes also called intellectual property rights. A subject to copyright is any creative work of an individual nature determined in any form, regardless of the value, purpose and manner of expression.
In particular, the works of copyright are the works:
- expressed in words, mathematical symbols, graphic signs (literary, journalistic, scientific, cartographic and computer programs)
- of art
- photographic
- luting
- of industrial design
- architectural, architectural-urban and urban planning
- musical and verbal-musical
- related to stage, stage and music, choreography and pantomime
- audiovisual (including films)
Copyright protection is of territorial character, that is, it covers only the territory of Poland. Protection abroad is regulated by laws of other countries and international agreements.
Copyright lists two types of rights: personal copyrights and proprietary copyrights.
Personal copyrights include the right to authorship and integrity of the work and decision-making
about the first dissemination. As the name suggests, they are personal and therefore belong only to the author of the work. The rights are subjective rights, so they are non-transferable and indefinite (they do not expire), the author can not also waive them.
Property copyrights are related to the creator's right to use and dispose of the work and to derive any material benefits from use. The property rights can be disposed of either in the form of the sale of a right (e.g. a sales contract, donation) or in the form of a license (a license agreement).
The period of the protection of the rights varies due to the type of the protected right. It is 70 years for literary works. The periods are usually counted from the death of the author or co-authors, however the Act also lists other events, such as the date of the first dissemination in relation to a work whose creator is unknown, unless the pseudonym does not leave any doubts about the author's identity or if the author revealed their identity, the first dissemination in in relation to a work for which proprietary copyrights are granted by a law to a person other than the creator (e.g. sometimes an employer is entitled to this right). The duration of proprietary copyrights is counted in the full years following the year in which the event occurred. This information is important if you wanted to check yourself if the given song has already entered the public domain.
Remember that as an author of a BA, MA, PhD and Habilitation thesis, you also own the copyright to your work (except when the scientific work was created by you under an employment relationship).
A license is an agreement to use a work. You can only use songs on the exploitation fields listed in the license. Fields of exploitation are the scope of the rights acquired under the license. Art. 50 of the Copyright Act lists three groups of rights:
1) with respect to recording and reproducing a work - production of a specific technique of copies of a work, including printing, reprographic, magnetic recording and the digital technique - that is, there are such rights as: photocopying, scanning, transfer to a computer memory or portable memory,
2) with respect to trading the original or copies on which the work has been recorded - marketing, lending or renting the original or copies - that is, selling, borrowing the work (physical copy of a book, magazine) but also any CDs, DVDs, pendrives on which you have saved the given song (book). Remember that an e-book in not a copy of a work within the meaning of the copyright law, because it is treated as a service consisting only of making the given work available,
3) with respect to disseminating the work in a way other than that specified in point 2 - public performance, displaying, showing, reproducing and broadcasting and re-publishing, and making the work publicly available in such a way that everyone could have access to it in a place and time by themselves selected - if you wanted to share a song on a social network, you would need to check whether the license includes such legal formulations.
If you want to learn more about the issue, we recommend the following site:
The Repository of the Cracow University of Technology makes its collections available under a license agreement valid for the Cracow University of Technology, a Creative Commons license and within the public domain.
The Cracow University of Technology’s license for the works that we use under the license agreement applicable to the Cracow University of Technology allows you to use digital resources on the premises of the Cracow University of Technology or only by registered persons (with an account) in the Cracow University of Technology Library.
Creative Commons licenses constitute a set of contractual patterns, the essence of which is the establishment of various systems of free, contractual sharing of works while maintaining copyrights. They are marked with the (CC) symbol. Using the licenses, the creator always retains copyrights, at the same time allows others to copy and distribute, and additionally, they can determine the terms of the use of the work. All types of licenses have their abbreviations derived from English and a graphic symbol.
The widest creative commons license entitles you to any exploitation of the work, provided you respect the right to authorship (license recognition by CC-BY). This license condition is present in all contract models, because the author's personal rights are not transferable. There is also a creative commons O (CCO) version that allows for a waiver of copyright, however, due to Polish copyright law, not providing for such waivers, it is interpreted as transferring the work to the public domain. In other countries, where the law permits the sale or waiver of author's personal rights, this license is more applicable.
Other licenses allow:
- using the work only for non-commercial purposes (CC-NC non-commercial use license) means that you can not use this work for profit-making purposes),
- subject to making the work available under the same conditions on which the original work was released (a license under the same conditions of CC-SA) means that you must make your work available under the same license,
- excluding the creation of dependent works (license without dependent works CC - ND), which in practice means that you can not change, transform, remix or create any new works based on it in the work (dependent works).
When using works made available under a creative commons license, you must provide the name and surname of the creator, specify the source of the work and indicate the type of license. You must always comply with the terms of the licenses, otherwise the license will automatically expire.
Creative commons licenses do not violate the freedom granted by copyrights to all users under allowed use and the right of citation.
Information on individual licenses has been collected on the basis of a website where you can learn even more about the idea of creative commons.
The public domain can be understood in two ways, as a common good of the whole society, and even of all humanity, which includes, among others, some cultural heritage, a common language, common knowledge and exchanged information, but also the natural environment or landscape or a legal concept. In the light of copyright, the public domain is understood as a tool to guarantee access to science, education and culture.
The term public domain is not present in the Polish copyright system. The concept of the public domain is present in international law in the Berne Convention.
According to contemporary Polish copyright, literary works (but also other works, such as works of art, music) are protected by law from the moment they were created. The right expires most often 70 years from the death of the author or co-creators (detailed information on this subject was presented in the analysis of the concept of copyright property rights), and the work enters the public domain.
The public domain also includes works for which copyright was not created at all, for example due to the time in which they were created (for example, the works of Jan Matejko or the works of Jan Kochanowski) or due to the insufficient level of individual creativity (short press releases, or your lecture notes) but also those that are not subject to legal protection due to the type of work, for example, laws, official documents.
The works that have entered the public domain can be used by you in any way and for any purpose. You can print them, publish them on the internet, multiply in whole or in parts, convert, translate, etc. you can use them for commercial purposes, and therefore for profit.
When using a song that has entered the public domain, you must remember to give the name of the author and the title of the work, because the personal copyrights do not expire and should always be respected.
There are many movements in Poland that promote the dissemination of the public domain idea, the best known are the Open Education Coalition or Legal Culture.
As you can see the copyright is very complicated, and is there anything you can always do with a work? Yes.
Permitted personal use allows everyone to use a widespread, protected work for their own needs, as well as for the needs of a person who stays with us in a family and social relationships. Borrowing a book to a friend, photocopying or scanning a book for your own or your friends' needs, playing music at birthdays are examples of allowed personal use. Using someone else's work will fall within the scope of allowed use only if it does not serve commercial or commercial purposes. The condition to use works within the limits of allowed use is to provide the name and surname of the creator and source of the work.
But remember that the law introduces restrictions in this area as well and permitted personal use does not apply to computer programs (all its forms, versions) or architectonic and architectural-urban works, it does not include any reproduction (on paper or similar media) of records of musical notes and electronic databases, an exception is however foreseen for researchers, because the law allows the use of creative databases for their own scientific use, not related to the purpose of earning.
The right of citation is a kind of allowed personal use. It is allowed to quote other works or short songs in their entirety in works that constitute a self-contained whole of fragments. However, it must be associated with the need for explanation, critical analysis, teaching or the rules of the genre of creativity (including the work in a larger whole, without which this whole would not be able to be created). In this case, the name and surname of the creator and source of the work should also be indicated. Permitted use can not violate the normal use of the work or reconcile the so-called legitimate interests of the creator (Article 35 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act).