[cc-community] avoiding the CC licensing path by rights users

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Thu Apr 10 19:29:37 EDT 2008


Barbara Bowen wrote:
> It¹s okay with them if other educators incorporate chunks of a document as
> part of a new document as long as they cite the original author and that
> it¹s not for commercial purposes.

Why does it have to be "not for commercial purposes" (teaching is a
"commercial purpose", if you make money from it). This largely
eliminates the usefulness of publishing the information.

Are you planning to sell the curriculum?

If not, then you should instead consider using an Attribution-ShareAlike
(By-SA) license. That way, any modifications or extensions of the work
must be available to all.

That probably eliminates the market for whatever exploitive use your
participants are worried about, while making sure that anyone can use
the work.

> But from what I¹ve read in today¹s posts, it
> appears the CC License may simply be confusing, rather than facilitative,
> partly  because it¹s still in its early stages of becoming a commonly
> recognized and used practice.

I'd say that's a misconception.

In this case, we're talking about dealing with large media
organizations. That's unlikely to be the people who want to use your
material (and even if they do, the CC license doesn't interfere). What
it does do is make the material readily usable by individuals and
smaller organizations (the sort of people who can't afford to hire
entire legal departments).

> Anyone willing to weigh in on whether you think the benefits of using the CC
> License, e.g,, posting in Open Education Resources (OER),  and being on the
> ³leading edge² os sharing work via the web, are worth the potential
> confusion.

Avoid using the term "the CC license" -- there's no such thing.

CC is an organization which manages several quite different
organizations. I've said some things about it that you might find
interesting in a recent article:

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/books/mihrfc/impossible_thing_3_free_art_and_the_creative_commons_culture

In particular, the 5th figure should give you an idea of how the
licensing landscape works in practice.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com



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