development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[David Wiley <dw2 AT opencontent.org>]

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