One of new features in GOSS iCM V9.1.0.1 is the integrated External content suggestions. In previous versions of GOSS iCM if you wanted a picture to illustrate your article you had a few options. Either you needed to take a photo yourself, find on in your photo library, or more commonly, go to your favourite search engine's image search, find and download an image to your computer, upload it to GOSS iCM and relate it to your article.
Now the second method has been integrated into GOSS iCM. You can now either define you own keywords to search the internet, or have iSuggest "read" your content, and suggest related content from external sources and the media library within GOSS iCM. If you wish to select some external content, one click will allow you to relate it to your page and add it to your media library within GOSS iCM.
What is the public domain?
However, content contributors need to be aware of the copyright that is in place for other people's content.
It's often stated that internet content is 'public domain', but this isn't accurate. Check the terms and conditions on your Facebook, Google+, YouTube or Twitter account and you'll find that all copyright on all content is retained by the creator and generally:
"you grant [them] a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with [their site]"
See Facebook's terms and conditionsfor further information.
So which content can you use and when is it ok to 'borrow' content? Its important to bear in mind the different rules and ethics around personal and commercial use. If in doubt assume you don't have permission, so be respectful of what the creator of the content will think of as their property.
Education or personal sites are considered non-commercial (not-for-profit) use. Local government sites may be considered non-commercial but you should check with your legal department for clarification.
Flickr and wikimedia operate under the creative commons license. See Flickr's terms and conditions for further information. The point of social networking sites is to allow users to be contacted. So it is relatively straightforward to email and ask the owner for permission. If you can't get hold of them, then credit them with a link to the source by relating an external link to the owner's site. Consider creating a flickr profile for your own organisation so that users can contact you.
Organisations should publish editorial guidelines for their sites and make sure that their webteams are aware of them, and should consider training users in Writing for the web and copyright issues.
Considerations
Before using content found by external search, you may want to consider the following points:
What privacy settings has the owner of the image applied? The more public the photo, the more acceptable it is to use the picture. Hardly anyone disables right-click (to save an image) any more, but if they have they're likely to be unhappy about their content being borrowed.
Have you made a reasonable effort to seek the content owner's permission? Make sure you can and do immediately remove any content should the owner object.
Is there a public interest in using the picture?
Could the use of the picture cause distress?
Is the photo of a child? You MUST have permission from the parent of any child under 16 in order to use a picture.
Can you link or embed? Video clips from YouTube, vimeo and other video hosts contain embed code, and flickr also now contains 'share this' code. This can be pasted into the scripts inline, allowing you can take content from other sources without loading it into your own GOSS iCM.
Posted by Aerynne Russell 4th November 2011
