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

[Stephen Downes]

Wayne Mackintosh (correctly spelled) writes,

> 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. 

And Rory wrote:

> If the content is otherwise available online or could be made 
> available online then you don't have a case. How can you sue them for 
> not making if freely available online if you as author don't do so? If 
> you do make it freely available online then it is freely available in 
> which case your CC content is freely available. It would perhaps help 
> and be most ethical for the university to point to your site but not 
> illegal if they don't.

My perspective on the licenses is that they are expressions of my 
wishes. Though theoretically possible, it doesn't seem to me that a 
lawsuit enforcing the license would ever be feasible for an average 
person against a determined corporation or institution. So no, a license 
is not sufficient to 'protect' against anything. Likewise, large 
corporations and institutions can and do use the legal system to extend 
their rights beyond what are granted by laws, which is why fair dealing 
has become a risky proposition these days.  But the separate issue of 
unequal access to the legal system is best brought up in another forum.

In the case of the example cited for Rory, I'd be dead, and hence 
neither in a position to make my content available online (unless I 
bequeath a trust fund, unlikely given my finances) nor to launch a 
lawsuit. But my wish that my content be freely accessible persists. But 
to my knowledge, my copyright does not expire when I do, and the 
conditions of a CC license are not conditional on the copyright owners 
(a) being alive, and (b) currently making the content available for free.

- (not yet deceased) Stephen

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Stephen Downes*
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
stephen at downes.ca ~ http://www.downes.ca
/Free Learning/
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