Hi Alan,
Yes the chapter includes paraphrasing of copyright material. For instance, see Chapter 2 of an Information Systems OER that references (paraphrases) Moore’s Law of Computing Power. I know most OER’s include referenced material and I am wondering if the additional language “except where otherwise noted” helps to reduce liability or if the adapting author must also seek permission to use these additional resources. Please let me know if you need more information, and I appreciate your reply! Chapter 2: Hardware - Information Systems for Business and Beyond (2019)
That’s an interesting but important detail, that this paraphrases another work. Copyright does not protect ideas or facts, only expressions. I can get a ton of specific information and brand new ideas from some scholarly paper and reuse them in a way that would be a clear case of academic dishonesty … and still not run afoul of copyright law. There’s even an exclusion for “that’s kind of the only way to express this idea” which allows you to have a very similar expression to another one and still not violate copyright. E.g., there are only so many ways to state a mathematical theorem (something I care about because I teach math!), so if I quote someone’s theorem in a way that is nearly verbatim, I’m probably not in trouble with regards to copyright. (Well, to my chagrin, there are lots of complications about copyrights and mathematics – one big shot law school professor once told me that, really, almost no math book could actually be copyrighted, because true mathematics is just “facts about the universe” and so is basically 100% fact and not expression – so that example is maybe not the best, but you see what I mean, and how it might apply to something like Moore’s Law.)
Oh, usual comment about IAmNotALawyer and this is not legal advice.
Additionally, I apologize if I’m saying something that is obvious to many people – actually, in my experience, many librarians know all about the “idea/expression distinction,” as it’s called in copyright law.
I am more NotALawyer than @poritzj – the example you shared has nothing that is copied in whole from the referenced source, it is all paraphrasing Moore’s Law to discuss a concept (how else would we ever discuss other ideas??).
If it had selected a quotation from the original, even with a citation you are possible grey space of fair use / fair dealing. There are no ironclad rules there, but for a great overview of the differences of attribution and citation, see Citation vs. Attribution – Self-Publishing Guide
As usually suggested, in cases of being unsure, your local reference librarians are worth checking with.