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Subject: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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  • From: Heather Ford <hford AT csli.stanford.edu>
  • To: cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [cc-education] cc.edu survey results and deja vu
  • Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 01:30:42 -0800

Sorry, but I'm still not exactly sure where the precise sticking points
are. From what I can see it is the disagreement over whether the license
should apply to only formal or both formal and informal education?

I think that if we are really serious about finding out what people think
about the licenses, then we need to extend the survey - and ask questions
that apply to specific circumstances/scenarios so that people can apply
the philosophy to actual real-world contexts. This is especially important
for the 'share-alike' clause which is difficult to comprehend if you don't
apply it to specific circumstances. I also think that there are different
stakeholders involved in this issue, and that all of their standpoints
need to be taken into account.

If someone can provide me with a list of the 'sticking points', then I can
summarise where we are at and we can take the discussion further.

Heather.

At 10:13 AM 12/11/2003, you wrote:
Stephen Downes wrote:

Three quotes, which illustrate my point:

Four (4) votes for “d) that the materials should only be used in the
context of a formal educational institution (e.g., not to be used for self-
study by individuals not enrolled as students in a formal school)”

It's interesting that you chose this point instead of the first one listed:

Twelve (12) votes for “e) that the materials are only to be used for
educational or research purposes.”

Perhaps we should do a follow-up exploring the relationship between what
people meant when they voted for e but not for d. More on this need for
follow up below.

If 'educational use' is going to be tied to some U.S. court's narrow
interpretation of the meaning of the term, then I'm not interested, and
would indeed caution people to avoid creating or using material branded
with such a restrictive license.

But if we are creating a legal instrument, don't we have to assume some
legal context for the instrument? If we don't want to be bound to a legal
context, perhaps we should be creating a Manifesto and not a license? I
wonder how people feel about CC generally, since it is obviously strongly
grounded in the US legal system.

My response is that after all the discussion, negotiation and conciliation
which seemed to lead to a consensus view, I am disappointed to find that
we are back to the starting point with the original proposal.

I agree with your sense of surprise. It seems to me that the consensus we
negotiated toward, in terms of what would be good for an educational
license, was not validated by a survey of what people actually think an
educational license would allow them to do. This is why I recommended
above that we might want to explore the difference between people agreeing
that the materials should be "used [only] for educational or research
purposes" on the survey and not feeling like they "should only be used in
the context of a formal educational institution."

Such a state of affairs would in other people lead to a state of cynicism
about the process and the product.

I would hope that the current state if affairs would give you more
confidence in the process. For example, during the "talking" it seemed
like people cared about the share-alike clause, but when it came down to
voting very few people seemed to think it was central.

It's important to note that many of the voters came from the blogoshpere
and are outside the conversation on the list. The survey was to be our
touchstone for "what the people really want." Although we need to explore
the "only educational use but not only formal educational use" issue
further, I think the matter for the share-allike clause was fairly clear --
we thought it was important, the voters didn't. Whose voice to we favor
in such disagreements?

But perhaps the more central question is this: a legal instrument must
exist in a legal context. If we work through the CC mechanism the context
will be somewhat US-centric. (It is worth pointing out that rebranding the
By-NC-SA license as Educational does not get around this criticism fully.)
Another option would be to attempt to develop the license in the context
of international intellectual property law, though I doubt there is much
history for defining "educational use" there (and, disappointingly, the
international context seems to be increasingly a mirror of US intellectual
property law anyway). Another option would be to create something other
than a legal instrument, like a Manifesto. But such a document can only
inspire people to share their material. It can not give them a legal
mechanism for doing so.

With high hopes of staying on good terms, ;)

D

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Heather Ford
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Reuters Stanford Digital Visions Program
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