Generative AI and Information Literacy: Ownership of Information

(Please note: The following information only applies to information users and creators in the United States. Different laws and practices may be in effect in different contexts.)

When it comes to copyright law, the first thing you need to know is that that you own the information that you create unless you assign some or all of those rights to someone else (such as a publisher) or you waive them (such as through a Creative Commons license).  

• Under copyright law, you have the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, and create derivations of your own original work. That means that anyone else who wants to use your work in one of these ways must have your permission to do so. 
• You do not have to do anything special to reserve these rights, such as formally publish a work or register it with the U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright is an automatic right. As soon as the work exists in tangible form, it belongs to you. 
• There are exceptions to copyright which fall under something called fair use. Fair use allows for the use of small portions of copyrighted works without permission for purposes related to (for example) teaching, scholarship, and research. This is why when you quote from a source in a research paper, you don’t need to ask the original author’s permission to do so—this falls under fair use. 
• Just like you own the copyright to any works you create, other copyright holders own the rights to the work that you use. This includes both formally and informally published works, including those you might find on the internet. 
• Most of the time, your use of that work will fall under fair use and so won’t require the permission of the original creator. But it’s important to know that some uses of a work do require the copyright holder’s permission. If you are ever in doubt about whether your use of a work falls under fair use, it is best to assume it does not and refrain from using it unless you have the copyright holder’s permission. 

(Please note: The following text was authored with early assistance from ChatGPT.)

Copyright infringement results from the unauthorized use of protected copyrighted materials. This type of violation is a legal matter. Plagiarism, on the other hand, is about passing off someone else’s words or ideas as your own (whether the material is copyrighted or not) without giving proper credit, such as through citation. Plagiarism is an ethical violation, but not a legal one. 

Giving credit to a source is generally enough to protect you from plagiarism. But even if you acknowledge that the information you are using belongs to someone else, that may not be enough to protect you from copyright violations in situations where your use of that work isn’t covered by fair use. To protect yourself from copyright violation, you need the permission of the copyright holder, preferably in writing.