Linking text

When you are unable to find or create an appropriate and needed image, video, or other objects to include in your open textbook, linking to or embedding copyrighted material with all rights reserved is permitted. In general, courts have not considered linking to a website or deep linking to a web page a copyright infringement, and that permission is not required to do so. However, you should avoid linking to a website that obviously commits copyright infringement, such as hosting pirated music or films. Always include a complete citation to the source.

If you use this method in an open textbook, the link needs to be accessible. This means the link text must describe the content of the link when taken out of context for the surrounding paragraph. Your link should open in a new window.

For example

Embedding a video

Embedding–or inline linking–involves adding an embed code to a web source (such as an open textbook) that results in a visual representation–or streaming–of digital content, such as a video, from another web source, such as YouTube or Vimeo. This is a very popular practice because 1) viewers don’t need to access a second website to watch the video, and 2) the embedder doesn’t sacrifice bandwidth because the video data is stored on the original site.

The question for open textbook authors, however, is: Does embedding violate copyright infringement for videos not released with a CC or open license?

In his blog post, “Is it legal to embed YouTube videos in a blog post?” Kenny Novak answers this question with a summary of YouTube’s terms. He says: “…as long as YouTube’s terms permit it, any YouTube user can embed your content without needing to ask your permission because you already GAVE them permission simply by uploading your content to YouTube.”

All videos shared on YouTube are assigned to one of two licenses. The Standard YouTube license is added, by default, to all videos uploaded to YouTube and sets the conditions described by Novak above.

A Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license is also available, but the user must manually make the change from a Standard YouTube license to a CC BY license by following these instructions. The CC BY license lets the video’s copyright holder give users advanced permission to copy, change, redistribute, and retain copies of the video. For more information, see “YouTube” in the Videos, Audio, and Interactive Media chapter of the Pressbooks Guide.

Recommendations

For authors who wish to embed videos by other creators in their open textbooks, it is recommended that they:

• make the best effort to embed openly-licensed or public-domain videos
• embed videos from video-sharing websites for which:
  • the Terms of Service clearly indicate this action is permitted
  • copyright holders can remove their videos in cases of copyright infringement
  • provide proper attribution

If you decide to embed a restricted video in an open textbook, we recommend that this information and a link to the original content are clearly indicated in the attribution statement.

Attribution