Regardless of its technical and pedagogical appropriateness, or the quality of its design, a digital learning resource cannot be reused if doing so would violate the terms and conditions imposed by copyrights, licenses, or contracts.

In the academic community, it is also an ethical obligation to give proper attribution to authors, regardless of whether it is a legal condition of use. Also, access to source code may be needed by anyone wishing to modify an existing digital learning resource for reuse.

This section examines how Authors and Collections define and express rights in a way that supports reusability, and how users and the technology environment can recognize and respect these rights.