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

[Wayne Mackintosh]

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 10:40 AM, Downes, Stephen <
Stephen.Downes at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca> wrote:

>
> But let’s take my own content as an example, which is licensed under
> Creative Commons. If a university uses my content (which I know at least
> some universities do) but makes it available only in an internal
> repository, hence requiring a student to pay tuition to access it, then my
> CC-licensed content is not freely available.
>

Correct -- I agree. In your example, using an NC license, you would have
legal recourse to challenge the use of your materials to restrict access
through a mechanism of tuition fees.

Similarly, the issue of enclosure would also hold true for a non-profit
entity requiring student registration to participate in a no-cost
professional development course using your materials.

I don't think that a license restriction (eg, SA, NC or ND) is sufficient
to protect against this kind of enclosure, and as such licenses are not
perfect mechanisms to regulate or control the intent of creators or
downstream users.

Clearly, technological means could be used to enclose access to resources
while still honouring the permissions of the original license -- a mild
form of DRM.  In short, OER is more than the 4Rs or licenses.

OER = Free (depending on your personal belief) + licenses or declarations
that enable the 4Rs + technological means to maximise downstream access.

The important message, irrespective of personal belief structures
appertaining to the meaning and implementation of "free" is that we should
encourage the use of free and open file formats and distribute OER on as
many "repositories" as possible.

Notwithstanding the debates, I think we're in a better position today than
we were a decade ago when Unesco adopted the concept of OER.

W
-- 
Wayne Mackintosh <http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg>, Ph.D.
Director OER Foundation <http://www.oerfoundation.org>
Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic
Commonwealth of Learning Chair in OER, Otago Polytechnic
Founder and elected Community Council Member,
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