development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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

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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