2.5: Copyright and Licensing

In this section, you will learn about different types of licences and how you might use them to allow other people to use your work.

By the end of the section you will understand the elements that make up a licence, what they mean, and how you could use a licence to allow other people to use your work. 

Relatedly, you will have the knowledge to understand the content of licences that other people may offer you for the use of their work.

Developing a stratgey

A useful starting point when thinking about licences is to decide what general strategy you would like to pursue with your work. 

Some dance artists are adamant that their work should be freely available to all – with no payment or permission needed if it is to be used by other people – often thought of as an ‘open’ strategy. Others want complete control over their work, and anyone who wants to use it will need permission and a licence. 

It is important to remember that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and that your strategy might change over time and with different dance works.

What is important to remember is that once you have created and recorded your work, then copyright subsists in that work, you can’t just ignore it.

In addition, if you do not say what you allow others to do with your work via a licence, that tends to produce a ‘chilling effect’ in that third parties might be worried about copyright and not use the work, just in case.

To start thinking about these issues, consider the following resource:

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This is about music and lyrics – but it gives some idea of the steps and choices to be made within copyright.

Creative Commons

Consider the following paper on Creative Commons Licences and take a look at search tool on the Creative Commons website.

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Is anything useful available via CC Search that you might like to use in your work? What sort of licence does it have attached to it? What does that allow you to do?

Have a look at the following paper on copyright licensing:

Can you start to envisage ways in which you might think about licensing your works?

Would you think about a Creative Commons license and develop an ‘open strategy’? Or might you think of ways in which you might get a financial return from your work? 

Who might be interested in using your work, and for what purpose? What sort of licence might you think about for your work? What rights might you think about granting?

Copyright strategy

Have a look at the following websites, and while you are doing that, ask yourself what copyright strategy the copyright owners have chosen with respect to the work.

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What are you allowed to do with the works on these sites?  Where have you found this information?

Do remember that licensing your work to a third party for financial gain obviously requires someone who is interested and willing to enter into that sort of commercial arrangement. The fact that copyright subsists in a dance, does not necessarily mean that it will produce a revenue stream.

Further reflections

Now that you have thought about how you might describe your practice (part 2.1), you understand more about copyright, authorship, ownership, the exclusive rights and limitations on those rights (part 2.2 and part 2.3) and you understand more about licenses (part 2.4) all of this can come together in thinking about a business plan – which is the subject of the next section.