Category: Copyright

Local Officers May Grant Permission to Redistribute Copyrighted Materials

When an author/creator sends material to be published by the SCA, they’re asked to fill out a Creative Works Grant of Use form, which offers several options including having the author assign their copyright to the Society.

While I’m not fond of this approach — in most cases, I’d rather see people retain rights to their work and merely grant the Society a license to use it — it is in widespread use, and it’s worth grappling with its consequences, including the following: If the SCA ends up owning the copyright to these contributions, what steps are needed to grant others permission to use them elsewhere?

I posed this question to the Society Webminister, who replied that local officers could grant others permission to republish those works, without requiring approval from further up the Society’s chain of command.

Correspondence attached below for additional context.

From: Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin
To: Society Webminister
Cc: Society Publications Manager
Date: March 10, 2023

Greetings from the East!

I have a policy question I’m hoping you can help to answer, which is related to this sentence in the standard site disclaimer provided by the Webministers Handbook:

For permission to use photographs, articles, or artwork from this site, contact the Webminister.

If someone follows this guidance and contacts a webminister for such permission, does the webminister have independent authority to grant it? 

In particular, if I’m serving as a local webminister and have published some educational material for which the author filled out a Creative Works Assignment form to transfer copyright to the SCA, can I make the decision to allow someone else to re-print it? 

Or if the request must be forwarded up the chain of command, at what level of authority should that decision be made?

Thank you!

— Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin

From: Society Webminister
Cc: Society Publications Manager
Date: March 15, 2023

It is my understanding that as long as there is a document in place (i.e. Release form) depending how that form is worded, you may either grant the request or ask that particular individual for permission to redistribute. It should not have to go any higher on the chain for that.

Release Forms for User-Published Content

Now that the new Release Forms handbook is in circulation, I’ve realized that it fails to address a long-standing point of confusion about whether written releases are required for images published by the populace on Society official communications platforms.

Wikis are the most salient example of this uncertainty — multiple kingdoms have operated for years under the impression that all photographs uploaded to an official wiki would require signed release forms, and since the logistics of managing that paperwork seemed prohibitive, they decided that wikis had to be “unofficial.” Continue reading “Release Forms for User-Published Content”

Release Forms Handbook Published

Well, it’s been a long and painful trip, but I’m pleased that the SCA has published a new handbook covering the use of release forms for recording permission to publish photos, creative works, and personal information.

Given that there are only a few areas of substantive policy changes compared with the vintage 2010 status quo, the process was surprisingly arduous. I spent months convincing folks in Society leadership that having an updated guide to this policy would be valuable, and wrote the first draft of all of the handbook text, then sent dozens of follow-up emails chivying it through the process. (It shouldn’t be this hard!) And now that the final document has emerged, I’m pained by the many little details that got mangled along the way.

But all of that is a matter for another day — for today, I’m going to try to bask in satisfaction of having gotten my first piece of Society-wide policy lead-authorship over the finish line.

Licensing of Software Developed for the SCA

An open letter to the corporate leadership of the SCA, lightly edited for clarity from the version I submitted in September 2022. — Mathghamhain

There is a long-standing issue within the Society around licensing for software developed by volunteers as well as related IT-related creations.

My direct experience with this is mostly in the context of the East Kingdom webministry, but in talking with folks from other kingdoms I’ve gotten the impression that this issue is widespread and dates back more than twenty years.

If you look at all the software written for various branches of the SCA — event calendars, order-of-precedence repositories, custom website themes, martial-authorization databases — I believe you will find that only a minority of it has clear copyright attributions or explicit licenses. Continue reading “Licensing of Software Developed for the SCA”

Processing Release Forms by Email

In talking with various officers from other kingdoms and within the Society’s leadership, it turns out that an undocumented provision allows for officers to gather release forms by email.

I’ve summarized what I’ve learned to date in the writeup below, which I will circulate for feedback — hopefully we can get any lingering issues ironed out, and then have this published somewhere official so that local officers can use this technique to streamline their work.

Continue reading “Processing Release Forms by Email”