[Oer-community] Is MIT thinking of putting its OCW material behind a pay wall?

[Steve Foerster]

Hi Stephen,

When you talk about the influence of the wealthy when it comes to
setting policy, that's possible because there is political power,
coercive power, for them to pursue.  The less that is controlled
politically, the more ability individuals have to control their own
lives through their own decisions.  Sure, there are billionaires out
there, but their purchasing power is eclipsed by all of us ordinary
people.  It's only through manipulation of political power that their
influence is so magnified.

You refer to economic priorities as separate from social, cultural and
political priorities, but these are all different parts of the same
elephant.  It's easy for people to say that their priorities are
different from the actual economic decisions that they make, but actions
speak louder than words.

For example, you point out that in the U.S. that fewer people per capita
attend university.  But that's not a failure of the educational system,
in that most adults here have the ability to benefit at least somewhat
from higher education.  And it's not priced out of reach; community
colleges are very affordable, and there is financial assistance
available that makes it free to the poor.  The issue is simply that many
people do not choose to go.

But that's their call.  We're not sparrows who all need to fly in
alignment.  It's healthy for individuals to have different ideas about
what constitutes an ideal education for themselves and for their
children, and it's a marketplace, not centralization, that makes those
diverse options available.


> The model I advocate is none of these. The model I advocate is:

> e. (i) the production of OERs is crowd-sourced; public
> institutions provide policies, (iI) resources and tools to
> support this production; resources are vetted and selected
> through a society-wide network-filter process (which is the
> natural point at which qualified and expert review takes
> place) and (iii) distributed through the educational
> process itself.

So long as this includes anyone who want to contribute, regardless of
which sector they come from, and I think you said it does, then I like
your model best also.


> Probably more accurately, you support a licensing scheme
> consistent with model (c), above.

No.  Philosophically, I don't accept the legitimacy of state-granted
monopolies on ideas, including copyright and patent, so I don't support
licensing schemes at all.

But I realize that even within the OER movement this is a minority
position, and I'm obviously willing to work with those who don't feel
this way.


> But note that in option (e) resources may remain the property
> of those who produced them, and may be distributed through a
> variety of licenses, including CC-NC. Because there is no need
> for commercial providers to be implicated in the production
> and distribution of educational resources at all, there is no
> need for licensing that supports commercial distribution.

But doesn't NC forbid commercial use, not just distribution?  What about
those private schools in poor areas of India that have arisen as a
response to the collapse of the local public system?  It's not like the
teachers who run that are in danger of becoming millionaires, they just
want to make a living.  Is there really good reason to keep their
students from having access to OERs?

The NC restriction is the same as any other licensing restriction in
that it's a barrier between the resource and the prospective end user.
If we're right that commercial publishers add no value, then NC doesn't
make a difference.  And if we're wrong, then as with the case above,
it's actively harmful.


> Free market capitalism may form a network-like decision-making
> process, but as suggested above, the network is distorted and
> ultimately damaged by participants with excess wealth, and
> therefore, excess control.

As I suggested, you're describing the sort of state corporatism that we
have today, not a free market.  The wealthy do have more resources, but
their influence is amplified by political power, not mitigated by it.


> Just as excesses in capital markets ought to be managed
> through taxation and regulation, so also constraints ought
> to be placed into educational content networks, precisely
> in order to ensure that the networks are stable, and promote
> the maximum participation from all sectors of society.

Without getting into the politics of taxation and regulation, OERs are
different from financial securities in that they can be endlessly
reproduced without devaluation.  There's no need to have one educational
content network to rule them all.  If different people have different
ideas about how to run an educational content network, great, let them.
 Presumably the one that is optimized to meet many people's needs will
be the most popular.

-=Steve=-


-- 
Stephen H. Foerster
http://hiresteve.com
http://hiresteve.com/blog
http://wikieducator.org/steve