[Oer-community] On-line education is using a flawed Creative Commons license

[Kim Tucker]

NB The thread "Freedom perspective (on NC, SA and mapping)" is also
relevant to this discussion.
Below are a few comments regarding:

> I think Stallman's point about the difference between software and OER
> content is relevant. In software, you adapt and redevelop functional
> modules. You reuse implementations of ideas. That's why patents are
> important for SW. In content, the issue is more about expression. The author
> may be interested in preserving the integrity of the message. That's why
> some countries have clearly separated moral rights from (commercial)
> copyrights.

Stallman uses a no derivatives licence for his works of opinion as he
does not see them as functional didactic works. Personally, I do not
make that distinction and usually use a libre licence (cc-by-sa) even
for works of opinion. The attribution requirement will always lead
people back to my version which may hold my opinion (at the time of
writing). I generally express these opinions to educate people (myself
included).

What do you mean by the following?

> That's why patents are
> important for SW.

I find that confusing with my current understanding of software
patents. See for example

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-patents.html
http://wikieducator.org/Software_patents

This also reminds me of a term which can distort our thinking in
discussions about non-rivalrous resources such as OER: "intellectual
property":

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Rethinking OER from the perspective/vision of "freedom to learn"
rather than sharing the property of the educational institutions led
me to write:

http://wikieducator.org/Say_Libre - an essay which touches on these
and other related issues.

Thanks

Kim

PS
Libre license: http://wikieducator.org/Libre_License
Libre knowledge: http://wikieducator.org/Libre_knowledge


Kim

On 30 November 2012 09:28, Ilkka Tuomi
<ilkka.tuomi at meaningprocessing.com> wrote:
> A good conversation...
>
> Stephen, it may be useful to distinguish between "abstract" openness and
> outcomes. Logically, CC-BY-NC is a subset of CC-BY. In this sense, it is
> more restricted. You are mainly talking about outcomes, i.e., whether the
> licensed resources will, or will not, be more or less freely accessible to
> potential users. In practice, you have to make quite a few assumptions about
> the actions of the different players, which may or may not be empirically
> right. E.g.:
>
>
> "- licenses that allow commercial use are less free than those that do not,
> because they allow commercial entities to charge fees for access, to lock
> them behind digital locks, and to append conditions that prohibit their
> reuse"
>
> As has been pointed out in the discussion, CC-BY-NC allows commerical
> players to negotiate a separate license. This is a private agreement between
> the parties and can, for example, contain terms that exclude other
> commercial actors from negotiating similar agreements.
>
> I think Wayne's point about MIT OCW was very interesting. From the outcome
> point of view, the MIT OCW non-commercial restriction has lead to much
> broader availability and use of the resources that could have been possible
> without NC. More restricted can sometimes be better if the objective is wide
> access.
>
> For the growth and maintenance of the resource, the situation can be
> different. The point is that if you are interested in the outcomes, you
> should focus on the empirical outcomes, for example, whether different
> licenses lead to enclosures of not. You might even ask whether enclosures
> are sometimes useful.
>
> I think Stallman's point about the difference between software and OER
> content is relevant. In software, you adapt and redevelop functional
> modules. You reuse implementations of ideas. That's why patents are
> important for SW. In content, the issue is more about expression. The author
> may be interested in preserving the integrity of the message. That's why
> some countries have clearly separated moral rights from (commercial)
> copyrights.
>
> Best
> ilkka
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 10:44 PM, Stephen Downes <stephen at downes.ca> wrote:
>>
>> Hiya all,
>>
>>
>> When I asked Richard Stallman about the use of open licenses for
>> educational materials, first he complained because I didn't use the word
>> "free", then he said that he wasn't interested in educational content, that
>> his arguments applied specifically to software. Clearly his views have been
>> modified since then, as this post attests.
>>
>> Without extending this into a full-blown debate, as I have already written
>> at length about this elsewhere:
>>
>> - licenses that allow commercial use are less free than those that do not,
>> because they allow commercial entities to charge fees for access, to lock
>> them behind digital locks, and to append conditions that prohibit their
>> reuse
>>
>> - works licensed with a Non-commercial clause are fully and equally open
>> educational resources, and are in many cases the only OERs actually
>> accessible to people (because the content allowing commercial use tends to
>> have costs associated with it)
>>
>> - the supposition that works that cost money can be 'free' is a trick of
>> language, a fallacy that fools contributors into sharing for commercial use
>> content they intended to make available to the world without charge
>>
>> - the lobby very loudly making the case for commercial-friendly licenses
>> and recommending that NC content be shunned consists almost entirely of
>> commercial publishers and related interests seeking to make money off
>> (no-longer) 'free' content.
>>
>> The problem with this is the Flat World publications or the OERu
>> assessment scenario - content deposited with the intent that it be available
>> without cost is converted into a commercial product. It's not free if you
>> can't access it. Content is different from software, it can be locked (or
>> 'enclosed') in ways free software cannot, without violating the license.
>>
>> In sum, this discussion would be better conducted without further debated
>> about which open license 'is best' and especially with fervent declarations
>> in favour of commercial-friendly licensing. The suggestion that the free
>> sharing of non-commercial content is not 'practical' is not Stallman at his
>> best, and is refuted by the experiences of millions in the field.
>>
>> -- Stephen
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2012-11-26 3:58 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga wrote:
>>
>> An interesting text by Stallman, which I copy bellow and emphasize some
>> points in italic. See also the article on permission culture at Wikipedia
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permission_culture
>>
>> On-line education is using a flawed Creative Commons license
>>
>> Prominent universities are using a nonfree license for their digital
>> educational works. That is bad already, but even worse, the license they are
>> using has a serious inherent problem.
>>
>> When a work is made for doing a practical job, the users must have control
>> over the job, so they need to have control over the work. This applies to
>> software, and to educational works too. For the users to have this control,
>> they need certain freedoms (see gnu.org), and we say the work is "free" (or
>> "libre", to emphasize we are not talking about price). For works that might
>> be used in commercial contexts, the requisite freedom includes commercial
>> use, redistribution and modification.
>>
>> Creative Commons publishes six principal licenses. Two are free/libre
>> licenses: the Sharealike license CC-BY-SA is a free/libre license with
>> copyleft, and the Attribution license (CC-BY) is a free/libre license
>> without copyleft. The other four are nonfree, either because they don't
>> allow modification (ND, Noderivs) or because they don't allow commercial use
>> (NC, Nocommercial).
>>
>> In my view, nonfree licenses are ok for works of art/entertainment, or
>> that present personal viewpoints (such as this article itself). Those works
>> aren't meant for doing a practical job, so the argument about the users'
>> control does not apply. Thus, I do not object if they are published with the
>> CC-BY-NC-ND license, which allows only noncommercial redistribution of exact
>> copies.
>>
>> Use of this license for a work does not mean that you can't possibly
>> publish that work commercially or with modifications. The license doesn't
>> give permission for that, but you could ask the copyright holder for
>> permission, perhaps offering a quid pro quo, and you might get it. It isn't
>> automatic, but it isn't impossible.
>>
>> However, two of the nonfree CC licenses lead to the creation of works that
>> can't in practice be published commercially, because there is no feasible
>> way to ask for permission. These are CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-SA, the two CC
>> licenses that permit modification but not commercial use.
>>
>> The problem arises because, with the Internet, people can easily (and
>> lawfully) pile one noncommercial modification on another. Over decades this
>> will result in works with contributions from hundreds or even thousands of
>> people.
>>
>> What happens if you would like to use one of those works commercially? How
>> could you get permission? You'd have to ask all the substantial copyright
>> holders. Some of them might have contributed years before and be impossible
>> to find. Some might have contributed decades before, and might well be dead,
>> but their copyrights won't have died with them. You'd have to find and ask
>> their heirs, supposing it is possible to identify those. In general, it will
>> be impossible to clear copyright on the works that these licenses invite
>> people to make.
>>
>> This is a form of the well-known "orphan works" problem, except
>> exponentially worse; when combining works that had many contributors, the
>> resulting work can be orphaned many times over before it is born.
>>
>> To eliminate this problem would require a mechanism that involves asking
>> _someone_ for permission (otherwise the NC condition turns into a nullity),
>> but doesn't require asking _all the contributors_ for permission. It is easy
>> to imagine such mechanisms; the hard part is to convince the community that
>> one such mechanisms is fair and reach a consensus to accept it.
>>
>> I hope that can be done, but the CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-SA licenses, as
>> they are today, should be avoided.
>>
>> Unfortunately, one of them is used quite a lot. CC-BY-NC-SA, which allows
>> noncommercial publication of modified versions under the same license, has
>> become the fashion for online educational works. MIT's "Open Courseware" got
>> it stared, and many other schools followed MIT down the wrong path. Whereas
>> in software "open source" means "probably free, but I don't dare talk about
>> it so you'll have to check for yourself," in many online education projects
>> "open" means "nonfree for sure".
>>
>> Even if the problem with CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-NC is fixed, they still
>> won't be the right way to release educational works meant for doing
>> practical jobs. The users of these works, teachers and students, must have
>> control over the works, and that requires making them free. I urge Creative
>> Commons to state that works meant for practical jobs, including educational
>> resources and reference works as well as software, should be released under
>> free/libre licenses only.
>>
>> Educators, and all those who wish to contribute to on-line educational
>> works: please do not to let your work be made non-free. Offer your
>> assistance and text to educational works that carry free/libre licenses,
>> preferably copyleft licenses so that all versions of the work must respect
>> teachers' and students' freedom. Then invite educational activities to use
>> and redistribute these works on that freedom-respecting basis, if they will.
>> Together we can make education a domain of freedom.
>>
>> --
>> Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
>> Open Knowledge Foundation Brasil
>>
>>
>>
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