development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Wouter Vanden Hove <wouter.vanden.hove AT pandora.be>]

Hi David, Stephen and others,

I signed up a few weeks ago, 
and I gave it a lot of thought.
your blog-message speeds up my posting :)
I don't want to write a long mail now , so I'll post some smaller
messages.

I expressed citicism before, and I want to clear up some
misunderstandings.

First, I am not a priori against a special educational license/option.
If the result is that such a license would make more material 
accessible, then I'm all for.

But I find it extremely difficult to foresee how this new license will
interact/interfere with other CC-licenses and how it will affect the
advocacy of "open content". 

My main point of criticism is that an "educational" license sounds very
positive, while in fact it would be the most restrictive CC-license. But
I'm afraid many people will not realize that.

I understand CC is about a spectrum of copyright-clauses ranging from
fully open to semi-closed or even fully closed.
I would not even oppose a CC "all rights reserved"-license, but I
wouldn't call it "open content".

Right now, there are open and semi-open CC licenses, but everyone talks
about them as if they are all alike:
"I use a CC license for my blog"
"Hey, X is also using a cc license now"
I am then always wondering: "CC license? Ugghh... which one?"
Maybe the uniform green logo amplifies this effect.

Therefore, I would like to propose that the letters of the license be
put on the logo itself: "by" or "by-nc" instead of "some rights
reserved" [or both "Some rights reserved: BY"], as second visual change
I would like to propose different color-schemes.  
for example:
white for Public domain
green for SA
yellow for the NC-option
blue for the ND-option
red for an all rights reserved

People could then talk about green or yellow CC licenses.
Now you have the put the mouse-cursor over the logo to read the url in
the statusbar. If you're in fullscreen you even have to click on it.
Most of the times you just see a uniform green logo, while the
underlying license can radically differ: PD is totally different then
AT-NC-ND.



Is the Edu-license a new separate license or a new option to choose from
within the other CC-licenses like SA, NC, of ND?

I believe a separate license would be better than an option.

If you look at the stats of use of CC options [no link, 'cause I lost
the reference], then you see that most people choose the most
restrictive BY-AT-NC, some "AT-BY", a small part "BY", and almost nobody
"public domain". 

If we extrapolate this with a new option, chances exists that many
people will migrate to BY-AT-NC-EDU. The net result is that CC-material
becomes more closed than before.


The post of Zachary E. Chandler is precisely what I'm afraid of:
people will stop talking about "BY" of "BY-SA" and will focus on "EDU",
because it is easier. And if they can choose options à la carte, why not
choose 'em all?
The net result here would be negative.



With a separate license you can solve this:
now cc-licenses are green.

Let's make the edu-license orange, to make clear that the intended
audience is NOT the audience that would normally choose a normal
CC-license,
but that the intended audience are those who would refuse to adopt a
CC-license and rather keep all rights reserved. 



David Miller said:
The comment by Wouter Vanden Hove that a cc.edu license "legitimizes the
*forbidding* of educational use" seems to miss the point that a standard
copyright already does that.

I know that, but for a CC license I wanted the make a comparison with
the other options:

BY versus BY-NC
BY versus BY-ND

Copyright by default forbids derivatives or commercial distribution.
Yet, here in CC, it takes an *additional* option to *restrict* it.

Of course, as an option, BY-edu-only would be self-contradictory, but
not in a separate orange license  where "by" can be redefined.



Wouter Vanden Hove
www.opencursus.be
www.open-education.org
textbook.wikipedia.org

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