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

Stephen Downes stephen at downes.ca
Fri Nov 30 12:21:20 MST 2012


Hiya Rory,

 

> You must have taken an ethics course. Your ability to rationalize shows
the mind of a well-trained ethicist, who can justify any position.

 

To my perspective, it is the people who are calling commercial resources
that you have to pay for 'free' who are the ones doing the rationalizing.

 

One of the advantages of having taken (and taught) ethics courses is the
ability to see that even for such common terms as 'free' there are different
perspectives.

 

'Free popcorn' inside the movie lobby is indeed free - if you are already
inside the movie lobby. From the perspective of the person who cannot afford
a movie ticket, however, the popcorn is not free at all.

 

A 'CC-by' OER can be used freely by anyone, true - but only by someone who
already has one. If you are locked outside the movie theatre, the resource
is no longer free (even if, if you had one, you could do whatever you wanted
with it).

 

It's hard for me, from my perspective, not to see disagreement on this point
as willful denial of the existence of other perspectives. It's as though the
people inside the movie theatre simply refuse to contemplate the idea that
there might even be people outside, unable to get in

 

-- Stephen

 

 

From: oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca
[mailto:oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca] On Behalf Of rory
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2012 2:01 PM
To: oer-community
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] On-line education is using a flawed Creative
Commons license

 

Stephen,
You must have taken an ethics course. Your ability to rationalize shows the
mind of a well-trained ethicist, who can justify any position.
The Public Domain (PD) is the MOST open, which used to be the case prior to
1963 when the Common Law countries adopted the European approach to
copyright i.e. all content is copyrighted by default.
So, in fact, the CC licence were formulated proceeding from the PD.
For most (if not all) practical purposes CC does not need the BY
designation. People who us PD works invariably mention the author in any
case because to do otherwise would be a misrepresentation. So CC-BY is
almost synonymous with PD. Neither PD not CC add "Commercial". ALL uses mean
ALL uses.
See comments below

On 12-11-30 7:05 AM, Downes, Stephen wrote:

Ilkka Tuomi  wrote,

 

> Logically, CC-BY-NC is a subset of CC-BY. In this sense, it is more
restricted.

 

Not so. No entity in the set "CC-BY-NC" is also in the set "CC-BY".

RORY>>>ALL content in CC-BY-NC is in CC and in CC-BY. Please provide me with
ONE example of ANY content that is NC that cannot also be used by anyone??
It doesn't exist.  They are not disjuncts.



 

It's a trick of the way CC licenses were originally formulated. The
designations in fact mean:

- CC-by-Commercial (CC-by-C)

- CC-by-Noncommercial (CC-by-NC)

So as you can see, the two sets are disjuncts, specially, not-C and C

RORY>> There is no trick. The CC should be CC-ALL and it is CC-ALL as a
licence that is trying to recapture the PD. It does not mean CC-Commercial
as this would not make sense. It would mean that the licences are restricted
to Commercial use only.
Each addition, including  CC itself and BY and SA and NC are restrictions on
the PD.
  

The creators of CC treated 'Commercial' as the default. There's no reason
why they should have had to do this. They could have established the
licenses the other way (indeed, the way I would have done it):

RORY>>> There is every historical reason to do this. They had to do this
because CC is an attempt to return to the Public Domain by overcoming legal
restrictions. This was the most logical step. 







CC-by - allows all free uses, ie., no limitations on access and distribution

CC-by-C - allows commercial vendors to restrict distribution contingent upon
payment

RORY>>> This is incorrect. Allowing commercial vendors to restrict
distribution does not in any way stop you from using the works. They can
restrict it, but others can use it if they wish. You can buy the bottled
water from a restricted distribution vending machine or you can use the free
tap.  Actually, restricting content in your house by copying the text on
paper does not allow free use. Now they own  the book. They have locked it
down like the vendors who sell it on their web site. But in both case you
can still access and duplicate the content.



 

In fact, each of CC-by-C and CC-by-NC create restrictions. They create
different sets of restrictions, which may be more or less limiting,
depending on your perspective.

RORY>> No they don't. There are NO restrictions on CC -BY as it stands. What
part of the word "ALL" do you not understand? There is no CC-C; it is CC-ALL
because after CC,  the added conditions are Restrictions NOT allowances.




 

The 'commercial-by-default' world in which we live is something recent and
something that has been created through the use of language and the setting
of assumptions. The creation of a 'non-commercial' clause is a way of
setting 'commercial' as the default. It makes it seem as though 'commercial'
implies no additional restrictions. But it's just a trick of language, just
a trick of perspective.

RORY>>> Not true. The Public Domain was the default and that goes back to
the beginning of writing in one opinion, but at least to 1710 with the first
copyright statute. PD always allowed commercial use. Your interpretation is
the sleight of hand. There is no trick of perspective. ALL means ALL.



 

That's why it's false and misleading to say that 'CC-by-C' is 'more free',
and why people shouldn't do it.

 

-- Stephen

 

 

Stephen Downes

Research Officer | Agent de recherche

National Research Council Canada | Conseil national de recherches Canada

Institute for Information Technology | Institut de technologie de
l'information

100 des Aboiteaux Street, Suite 1100 | 100, rue des Aboiteaux, suite 1100

Moncton, New Brunswick | Moncton (Nouveau-Brunswick) E1A 7R1

Tel.: (506) 861 0955 

Fax: (506) 851 3630

Stephen.Downes at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca 

 

Government of Canada | Gouvernement du Canada

 

From: oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca
[mailto:oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca] On Behalf Of Ilkka Tuomi
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2012 4:28 AM
To: oer-community
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] On-line education is using a flawed Creative
Commons license

 

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

 

 






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-- 
Rory McGreal
UNESCO/COL Chair in OER
Athabasca University
rory at athabascau.ca
Toll Free:1-855-807-0756
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