development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Heather Ford <hford AT csli.stanford.edu>]

Hi all,

I'd just like to introduce myself to the group. My name is Heather Ford - 
I'm a fellow at the Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship Program at Stanford 
(http://reuters.stanford.edu) and am going to be working on interactive 
learning material to teach tolerance in South African schools. I'm from 
South Africa and have been working for non-profits, including the 
Association for Progressive Communications (www.apc.org) for the past 4 
years - especially in the field of communications policy advocacy. I've 
helped develop a number of modules for the APC - on Internet policy, the 
World Summit on the Information Society, women and war - and have used the 
CC licenses for this content.

I'm really interested in the discussion going on here, but I'm not sure I 
get it fully, so you'll have to bear with me.

All I can say is that I agree with Stephen about the nature of CC licenses 
and the reason that they are being seen as such an excellent alternative 
for freer content online - and it would be important to retain the freedom 
of those licenses in the future.

But I'm really interested to hear from Dave exactly why there would be the 
need for a more restrictive license?

I'm also really keen to figure out how CC can be made easier for curriculum 
developers. At the moment, it is pretty easy to add your work to the 
commons, but less easy to find relevant works to use in development. For 
example, all the projects (curriculum, articles, books) that I have worked 
on at the APC have been registered under the Creative Commons licenses. 
This was pretty easy to do. What is not easy, is finding specific images 
etc that I could use for use in designing our curricula etc. I know that 
this first stage of the CC project is really about getting the word out 
there about the new licenses, and I know that different formats of works 
are being developed as we speak, but as the database grows, it will become 
increasingly important to give value back to those in the community and 
give more of an incentive to those wanting to contribute works other than 
music.

One of the ideas that I thought of was if we could get even a small search 
working such as the one on Google, where you have different tabs to find CC 
works.

Anyway, its really good to meet all of you - virtually at least.

Look forward to taking part in more discussions :)

Best,

Heather.



At 05:50 PM 10/7/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> Hiya,
>
> We can agree, but you put a pretty big BUT right in the middle...
>
> > BUT, I don't think the existence of the Education License would
> > necessarily prevent work on a separate, more restrictive
> > license. What
> > happens next will just depend on what real, normal users want.
>
> There may be a separate, more restrictive license, but I would
> vigorously oppose their being branded as Creative Commons licenses.
>
> There are alternative approaches to the creation of more restrictive
> licenses. We are working with ODRL here at NRC and have developed
> a wizard system (which will be released one day really soon) that
> allows developers and publishers to create what we call licensing
> 'models' that can incorporate any number of licensing options.
>
> In my view, Creative Commons licensing should be reserved for
> content that can be freely used by everyone; that was its purpose
> and intent, and that's what it is widely understood to be. We
> can work together, even, toward creating a system that supports
> a variety of licensing options. But let's not dilute what Creative
> Commons stands for.
>
> As for "what real, normal users want," this is why I have harped
> on open decision-making processes. I don't think anyone, not even
> me ;) can claim to be representative of the General Will without
> some means of determining what that Will may happen to be.
>
> -- Stephen
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Wiley [mailto:david.wiley AT usu.edu]
> > Sent: October 7, 2003 6:30 PM
> > To: development of an education license or license option for
> > Creative Commons
> > Subject: Re: [cc-education] A radical alternative proposal
> >
> >
> > Downes, Stephen wrote:
> >
> > >What we are calling the 'Educational License' is equivalent to the
> > >'Attribution non-commercial share-alike' license, as described at
> > >http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
> > >
> > >
> > Yep
> >
> > >That the 'Educational License' is a difference of name and branding
> > >only, not a difference of terms and conditions, of the By-NC-SA
> > >license.
> > >
> > >
> > Yep
> >
> > >And that this will *continue* to be the case (in other
> > words, there is
> > >a committment on the part of Creative Commons not to
> > introduce further
> > >conditions or restrictions after a user base has been established).
> > >
> > >
> > Yep. We couldn't bait and switch legally. "Oh, that license
> > you chose?
> > We've changed it's conditions now. Just FYI." We're not long distance
> > providers.  =)
> >
> > BUT, I don't think the existence of the Education License would
> > necessarily prevent work on a separate, more restrictive
> > license. What
> > happens next will just depend on what real, normal users want.
> >
> > >And that the 'Educational License' is offered as a handy-dandy
> > >short-cut through the license-creation wizard, again, not creating a
> > >new type of licensing, but rather, offering a convenient,
> > easy-to-find
> > >option for educators.
> > >
> > >
> > Yep
> >
> > >If this is the proposal, I endorse the proposal.
> > >
> > >
> > Glad to hear it! See, we can agree! ; )
> >
> > D
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > cc-education mailing list
> > cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-> education
> >
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -
> Stephen Downes ~ Senior Researcher ~ National Research Council Canada
> Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
> http://www.downes.ca stephen AT downes.ca
> stephen.downes AT nrc.ca http://www.iit.nrc.ca/e-learning.html
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