Copyright & Permissions

All work published by Computers and Composition Digital Press must comply with U.S. Copyright Law. Authors may also use media licensed with the Creative Commons according to the terms of the license.

Authors must be the original creators of all media (text, audio, photographic, video) included in their ebooks/projects OR the media must be in the Public Domain (as defined by U.S. Copyright Law) OR Authors must secure permission to use copyrighted media from the copyright holder OR Authors must use media according to terms of its Creative Commons license.

The CCDigital Press also recognizes the Fair Use of materials for scholarly purposes as outlined by U.S. Copyright Law. The Fair Use provision, however, remains open to interpretation and does not always provide clear and direct answers about the scope of fair use and its meaning in specific situations. Thus, for the Press—which is a non-commercial enterprise—we will interpret Fair Use according to the following characteristics:

Non-original material used for parody, scholarship, criticism—as long as the original, copyrighted source materials are cited and documented fully by the author.
Non-original material that is significantly transformed from its original intent—as long as the original, copyrighted source materials are cited and documented fully by the author.
Non-original material used that is not central or significant to entire work—as long as the original, copyrighted source materials are cited and documented fully by the author.
Non-original material that has no significant effect on the market or potential market for the original copyrighted work—as long as the original, copyrighted source materials are fully cited and documented by the author.
Non-original material that represents a relatively small amount of the original copyrighted work—as long as the original, copyrighted source materials are fully cited and documented by the author. Although defining a "small amount" is difficult, we suggest that authors use less than 10% or 3 minutes of motion media, less than 10% or 1000 words of alphabetic texts, less than 10% and no more than 30 seconds of music, and not more than 10% or 15 images from any single original source.

We understand that such standards must remain flexible in digital media environments, so authors with questions about copyright, licensing, fair use, or publication with CCDP, are encouraged to contact the Editors.

For more information, including a Permission Request Form, please visit the Author Materials section of the University Press of Colorado website.