development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[David Wiley <david AT wiley.ed.usu.edu>]

I want to respond in reverse here; please forgive.

> There's already plenty of computer software in the world that's available
> under a restrictive license. My wife has a copy of Microsoft Word that's
> licensed for educational use only. It's proprietary, not free, and there's no
> reason CC should help Microsoft to promote the software or debug the license.

This is an apple / oranges comparison. M$ Word is licensed only for 
educational use only. cc.edu material gives users license (see 
http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/fullrights) to copy the work, 
to distribute it, to display or perform it publicly, to make digital 
public performances of it (e.g., webcasting), and to shift the work into 
another format as a verbatim copy, as long as they attribute, stay 
noncommercial, allow share-alike derivative works, and only make 
educational uses. VERY large difference between M$'s so-called 
educational use license.

> This strikes me as silly, but if they want to do something that silly, they
> can write their own license. Similarly, a dedicated zionists could write
> a political tract and release it under a license that only allowed jews to 
> copy
> it, and a palestinian activist could do something similar, for arabs only.
>
> The question is not whether there's anyone who wants a certain licensing 
> scheme.
> The question is whether CC should lend its name and legal expertise to it. If
> people don't want to contribute to the world of free information, that's their
> business, but I don't see why they deserve any help with it. The "Commons" in
> Creative Commons has to mean something. It's not possible to say one is 
> putting
> something in the commons and yet denying access to soldiers, politicians, 
> arabs, jews,
> or people who talk on their cell phones while driving SUVs.
>  
Overstating for effect is generally my sole territory, but you've done 
it well here. =) Your encouragement of everyone writing their own 
license would only significantly increase the confusion you wanted to 
avoid in your last post. It also creates the same troubles OPL did, 
namely the creation and evangelism of licenses by people with no formal 
legal background.

Providing one common, highly visible, legally sound license for people 
who want to encourage education (but nothing else, for whatever reason) 
should minimize the confusion you mentioned last post, but maximize the 
amount of content which will become available. (See 
http://www.reusability.org/blogs/david/archives/000139.html for a longer 
discussion.)

D