Rights, Licenses, and Usage Settings for Media

This document is meant to help users understand, navigate, and correctly fill-in the metadata of the Ownership and Permissions section of the media submission form.

Organizational Management Team members may also find this page useful for understanding how best to fill-in their Organization Permissions Default template.

When submitting new media to MorphoSource, contributors are presented with fields under the heading Ownership and Permissions on the last page of the submission workflow.  Appropriate Ownership and Permissions settings for the media you contribute are critical for ethically managing expectations for use and re-use of those media. Total compliance may also involve transferring user ownership, or uploading your data on behalf of someone else using proxy settings as described in User Roles for Media.  In addition, you should know whether your media needs a download reviewer and if there is a particular person who needs to fulfill that role according to a museum policy or an agreement amongst collaborators.  In some cases the Ownership and Permissions will be pre-populated based on settings from an Organizational Management Team's Organization Permissions Default template. In such cases, users should consult with Team representatives before modifying the template values.

As a reminder, contributor users on MorphoSource must agree to the MorphoSource Terms and Conditions for Contributors, and some provisions of those terms and conditions are specifically relevant here: 

• Contributors agree that it is their sole responsibility to research, understand, and appropriately set the ownership and permissions for the media they contribute.  
• Contributors acknowledge that MorphoSource cannot provide guidance on the “correct” settings for their particular datasets. Thus, this information is only meant to help contributors understand the intended use of MorphoSource media Ownership and Permissions settings, not as instructions or recommendations as to which settings are most appropriate for particular datasets.
• Contributors acknowledge that MorphoSource provides no guarantees or assurances on the efficacy of the Ownership and Permission settings to prevent third parties from disobeying stated restrictions or to make third parties legally culpable if they do disobey stated restrictions.

There are Three Combinable, but Independent Aspects of Ownership and Permissions

The three aspects of Ownership and Permissions are given with linked documents describing them in the table below. They are interrelated, but each has fields and settings specific to it. They can be used in combination or independently for regulating re-use of media contributed to MorphoSource. Sometimes there is direct overlap in restrictions specified by different aspects of the Ownership and Permission settings (e.g., commercial use). In such cases, the MorphoSource UI enforces compatible settings between aspects. For example, it is not possible to combine a non-commercial Creative Commons license (e.g., CC-BY-NC) with a MorphoSource Download Re-use Agreement that permits commercial use.

All Aspects of Ownership and Permissions Apply to Downloaders

Whenever users download media, they must agree to all Ownership and Permissions settings, across all aspects, as part of the terms and conditions of downloading the media.

Ownership and Permissions apply regardless of Media Visibility (Publication Status)

All settings apply regardless of the publication status (i.e., private, restricted download, or open download) of any particular media.  This means that if a user is given edit or download access to a download-restricted or private media, they will still need to agree to the Ownership and Permission settings before being allowed to download.

Below is a screenshot from a real MorphoSource media showing which fields of the "Ownership and Permissions" section relate to Copyright and Licensing, MorphoSource Download Use Agreement, and Additional Use Agreement.