Clearance/clearing means ensuring that you can document that you have permission to use a work if a rights holder contacts you.
When you "have permission," lawyers say you have received "a license" or "the right of use."
Material found on the internet: Check if there is information about a "license" and how you can use the material you have found. If there is no information, it generally means you cannot use it freely, and you should contact the entity responsible for the website where you found the material.
Material published in print: The publisher usually holds the rights to the material, and you need to ask for permission. Remember, this also applies to your own published articles.
Clearing material does not always require a large contract, but it should be in writing, and an email from the rights holder is often enough. Be sure to save this email for safety.
The risk for you and DTU is that the rights holder may demand the deletion of the material and financial compensation for its use.
The person who holds the copyright to a work has the exclusive right to control the work by making copies and making it available to the public. In other words, only the author can decide where, when, how, and to what extent the work can be copied or made available to the public, for example, via the internet.
Anyone who wishes to copy or publish another person's work must therefore, as a rule, have the author's permission, as this is an action over which the author has exclusive rights under the law.
This means that you may not use texts, photographs, images, graphs, illustrations, technical drawings, etc., without having obtained permission from the person who created the work.
In some cases, the person has transferred their rights to others (e.g., a publisher), and in these cases, you must contact the new rights holder if you wish to use the material.
If you are unsure about who to contact with copyright questions, please write to ophavsret@dtu.dk and include a screenshot, link, and other information, so we can guide you further.
The copyright group cannot help you clear the material, but we can help you find out who to ask and about what.
