Licensing notes

newMediaWiki is written by williamCromar to guide new media artists in the development of their practice and is published to the web under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

This allows anyone to use the material and build on it for any purpose and is considered a Free Culture License, with “free” used in the “free speech” or “libre” rather than “free stuff” or “gratis” sense of the word. There are restrictions associated with this license that do not impact the user’s rights to use, but which obligate the user to honor two responsibilities: Attribution and ShareAlike.

  • Attribution | You must attribute the author, williamCromar, and newMediaWiki as the source for the material in a written statement in your document mentioning the author and source (footnote, credit note, or licensing note such as this one), and a direct link or URL for the newMediaWiki home page: https://williamcromar.com/newmediawiki/.
  • ShareAlike | Any derivative work you make that alters, transforms, or builds upon this work must be distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License.

Citation and use of media assets

newMediaWiki contains multiple text, image, audio, interactive, and time-based works that are covered under several licensing schemas, including but not limited to restrictions on copyright, public domain, or Creative Commons. As a project based on the Open Educational Resource ethos intended for use in academic contexts, newMediaWiki and its author make every attempt to faithfully follow the rights and responsibilities governing United States copyright exceptions and limitations (a.k.a. Fair Use) law and Creative Commons guidelines regarding the use of the Free Culture License level of CC registration.

The primary responsibility respecting the rights of original authors or holders of copyright is proper citation of work so that the original source of the work can be recognized and traced. Media assets used herein are always cited, in bibliographic terms, following Modern Language Association (MLA) standards and direct URL links to cited web resources are maintained wherever possible. The web is an ephemeral world, and where URLs are no longer active, they are noted by a link via Internet Archive (the Wayback Machine) or, if not archived, by the date accessed.

Although inline citations are an MLA standard for text, to reduce the long-scroll nature of many pages, we substitute a footnote system. To keep bibliographic citations from inflating page size even further, these are linked to a separate Bibliography page. While this schema deviates somewhat from print-centric research practice and wiki-style knowledge bases, we find excessive text-based citation adjacent to visual media assets and long bibliographic citation scrolls are disruptive to the user experience, particularly on mobile devices. The schema we have devised here provides a remedy.

Categories of use

Use of media assets on the site falls under one or more of the following categories:

  • Original illustration assets by the author | These are covered by the CC BY-SA 4.0 International License covering content native to newMediaWiki, and are identified as work by the author in the citation.
  • Original PROFESSIONAL ARTWORKS by the author | From time to time the author uses work from his professional visual art practice for illustrative purposes. Unlike illustration assets native to newMediaWiki as described above, the author claims full copyright with all rights reserved by williamCromar and/or TangenT ArT CollaboraTive. Original artworks are clearly identified as such in the citation.
  • Works cited via web | The author makes every effort to use work that is covered either by public domain, Creative Commons licensing, or for which fair use in an academic, non-commercial context can be rightly claimed. In the instance that a link to such work expires, the expired link is kept for reference, and wherever possible an archive link is included.
  • Works cited via non-web media | In these instances, including but not limited to books and periodicals, assets have been digitized with a statement indicating Fair Use or Public Domain usage as appropriate. Image scans are created at a resolution that discourages their use for print purposes.

If you are the author of an image in the last two categories and wish to contest the fair use or public domain claims made by the author, please contact williamCromar through the Contact form and a mutually agreeable resolution will be found.

Other CC Licenses

Creative Commons licensed work is used to build newMediaWiki, but not all material is covered by the Free Culture level of licensure claimed for the wiki. Most often, these are Attribution-NonCommercial (BY-NC) or Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) level licenses.

In such cases where CC licensure of a more restrictive level is claimed by a creator, newMediaWiki explicitly states the level of licensure for that portion of the wiki which derives from such content, and that portion of the newMediaWiki carries the same level of restriction.

For a primary example, newMediaWiki updates and/or revises many exercises from the excellent Digital Foundations book and wiki by xtine burroughs and Michael Mandiberg. The compelling interest for such derivative work arises from the need 1) for tutorials that match current software editions, and 2) to alter the exercises to better fit this wiki’s purposes. In those cases, burroughs’ and Mandiberg’s BY-NC-SA license covers those exercises or portions thereof.

Fair Use

Creative work used in newMediaWiki is, from time to time, covered by copyright owned either by the creator, the entity commissioning the work, or their estates. In an educational context such as this wiki, it is conventionally understood that low-resolution images of works of art, video, or sound fragments of short duration, or like-kind sampling, qualify as Fair Use under United States copyright law. Though an individual creative work may be subject to copyright, its presence here is covered by the doctrine of Fair Use because:

  • The creative work is a historically significant work that could not be conveyed in words.
  • The inclusion of the creative work is for information, education, analysis, or criticism only.
  • The inclusion of the creative work in the wiki meets the educational mission of the wiki because it illustrates a primary sample of work produced by the creator.
  • Any sample of the creative work included is a low-resolution illustration or a short-duration fragmentary sample of the original work unlikely to cause a negative impact on the copyright holder.
  • The creative work is not replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted sample of comparable educational value.

Fair Use in newMediaWiki does not imply that the same may be claimed in another context-oriented toward a non-educational or commercial purpose. Original copyright is still held by the owner and governs any use outside of the wiki. Permission to use work in any context other than Fair Use must be sought from the copyright owner, not newMediaWiki. For that purpose, newMediaWiki clearly cites original sources for Fair Use material.

Public Domain

United States copyright law provides that exclusive intellectual property rights do not extend to creative works for which the copyright term has expired, is inapplicable, or has been forfeited or waived by the creator. U.S. law also recognizes any faithful photographic reproduction of creative work in the public domain is itself also in the public domain, since no attempt at derivation or transformation wherein a new, original idea has been created has been attempted in making said reproduction. Works in the public domain are articulated as such in citation and may be freely repurposed.

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