Creative Commons Education License Under Review (cont'd)

Submitted by Zach Chandler on August 24, 2003 - 04:46.

Despite continued dissent over the implications and potential harm of a Creative Commons education license, it appears that project lead, David Wiley, will make an official recommendation in the next week or so. (Read on for the license details. I will bring any concerns voiced here to the cc.edu mailing list.)

Disclaimer: I am a proponent of the license, as posted earlier on Kairosnews.

excerpted from a listerv post by David Wiley, the proposed license will:

  • Require educational use as per the education use clause drafted and
    discussed on this list,

  • Require attribution as per the present option in the standard CC
    infrastructure (because academics expect citations and references),

  • Disallow commercial use as per the present option in the standard CC
    infrastructure (because this is what educational licenses intuitively
    mean to most people), and

  • Allow modifications of your work as long as others share alike as per
    the present option in the standard CC infrastructure (because this is
    the spirit of teaching and learning -- passing on what you know to
    others who build upon and improve it).

"Educational use" is clarified in an earlier post by Glen Otis Brown:

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above
except in satisfaction of both of the following conditions:

(i) You do so in a manner that is directly related to and of material
assistance to the primary teaching and learning activities of an educational institution,
and

(ii) You do so solely for educational purposes.

An "educational institution" is a school or other organization primarily
and directly engaged in facilitating teaching and learning.

Anyone wishing a more direct representation of their vote on the cc.edu issue than the relay I am offering, is welcome to join the mailing list.

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cel4145's picture

re: education license

Submitted by cel4145 on August 25, 2003 - 20:19.

well, i thought i would wait until i read through the discussion on this before responding, but i'm not so keen on the license usage being tied to being associated with an "educational institution."

maybe it's just me, but i'd be happier with a license which was tied to "learning" not institutions.

Wiley's CC philosophy

Submitted by Zach Chandler on August 27, 2003 - 09:51.

Project lead David Wiley lays out what I think is a compelling argument for his vision of cc.edu and why it would be a net gain for the commons.

"http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-education/2003-August/000033.html">http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-education/2003-August/000033.html

I've also posed the question of broadening the language of the "educational use" clause to include content not affiliated with institutions; we'll see what response is forthcoming.

cel4145's picture

re: Wiley's CC philosophy

Submitted by cel4145 on August 27, 2003 - 10:47.

Wiley writes,

If this is true, then there are probably a number of people /
organizations who are not willing to give away all the rights which a
standard CC gives away, but are willing to give away more than
traditional copyright retains.

First, I'm not certain I buy into this claim. I'd like to see a significant number of testimonials. But more importantly, I believe that we should be moving in the long term toward copyleft as the sharing model and certainly not, as in this instance, providing another license which is not Open Source. We should educate education about licenses so that they learn to make choices, not build one with a label to attract them with major restrictions which will prevent people from learning more about the how's and why's of open content.

Second, compare who is excluded (and included) when creating a license with non-commerical vs education-only. Let's consider who is excluded:

  • Self-learners (as Stephen Downes has pointed out) and independent scholars, which, I might add, would exclude a Kenneth Burke (who was not associated with an educational institution during much of his career) from working with and republishing cc.edu materials.
  • Not-for-profit organizations who might be interested in extending cc.edu materials, providing print versions at cost, or setting up additional download mirrors to increase access or maintain materials which are no longer available elsewhere online (the direction that ERIC is heading is an example to consider).
  • Or even online discussion communities, such as kairosnews. despite the fact that we are mostly teachers here, I do not believe that we fit the educational institution qualification.

Nor I am I thrilled with the idea that universities, which are behaving like the content industries in the way that they are laying down claims on IP, should have unlimited rights with such materials. I would fear, too, that higher education, in an effort to maintain commerical opportunities on faculty IP production, might prohibit the use of other licenses while allowing cc-edu (this is just a wild thought).

My comments on David Wiley's blog

Submitted by wordmunger on August 27, 2003 - 15:05.

Here's the question I asked on David Wiley's blog:

I’ve been out of town/Internet range for a while, so this is the first I’ve heard of this explosive debate. My biggest concern with noncommercial licenses is what I think of as the “Kinko’s effect.” I actually worked for HarperCollins during the time when they led the lawsuit against Kinko’s, which put a significant stopper in their student xeroxing business. Even though “educational use” is specifically allowed in the copyright laws, Kinko’s couldn’t make copies of materials for teachers in educational institutions. I’d be concerned that this license could have some of the same problems. On the other hand, I’d be glad to learn that the clause is carefully worded to avoid such problems, so this isn’t so much a critique as a request for clarification.

--Dave