development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

["Sanford Forte" <siforte AT ix.netcom.com>]

> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Quick draft (David Wiley)
>    2. Re: Quick draft (Stephen Downes)
>    3. Re: Quick draft (David Wiley)
>    4. Re: Quick draft (Heather Ford)
>    5. Re: Quick draft (David Wiley)
>    6. CC-BY-SA  or  CC-BY-NC-ND (email AT greglondon.com)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 10:02:56 -0700
> From: David Wiley <dw2 AT opencontent.org>
> Subject: [cc-education] Quick draft
> To: development of an education license or license option for Creative
> Commons <cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org>, Laura Lynch
> <llynch AT stanford.edu>
> Message-ID: <4023C8C0.70808 AT opencontent.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Hello all. There have only been a handful of responses to the last
> email. I hope people won't feel offended or that I'm jumping the gun by
> offering draft language with so few responses, but we are working on a
> schedule.
>
> As context for the draft below, please take a moment to look at the
> format of CC's new Sampling License -
> http://creativecommons.org/license/sampling - I've made a conscious
> effort to make our draft similar in structure and style. There is some
> discussion below the draft.
>
> <DRAFT LANGUAGE>
>
> If you make your work available under the Education License, you require
> that users of your work:
>
>   - Cite you as the source of the work per standard academic practices,
>
>   - Make only noncommercial uses of your work which primarily and
> purposively facilitate learning, and
------------
HI David,

Good work.

Would the word "noncmmercial" forbid a content-based "Red Hat" from
organization and redistribution of the materials? This is important because
once the content resevoir fills up, many large-scale users (e.g. school
systems) will require the organizational and distribution savvy of a
commercial distributor (with customer service capabilities) to achieve
optimal large-scale use.

Clearly, such an organization would be "commercial" in nature - whether as a
non-profit, or for-profit. Again, would the spirit (more importantly, the
letter) of the license forbid this?

>
>   - Distribute any modified versions of your work
>
>      + under this same license, and
>      + include in the distribution a copy of the original work which
> allows users to determine what changes you made to the derived work
> (inclusion by link / reference is sufficient)
>
> Do you want to:
>
> Allow teachers, students, and others directly associated with a formal
> educational institution, as well as mentors, tutors, self-learners, and
> others who may not be directly associated with a formal educational
> institution, to make permitted uses of your work?
>
>   - Yes
>
>   - No, I want to restrict use of my work to only teachers, students,
> and others directly associated with a formal educational institution.
---------------
The two distinctions above would be practically impossible to police. Why?
Because of the word 'formal', which would certainly be challenged.

Also, it seems a pity to forbid a learner to use materials just because she
is not part of a 'formal' educational setting. It smacks of a certain
elitism that runs counter to the spirit of open content. In fact, such a
distinction would fly in the face of letting open content get to the 'edge'.
and thus spur on new forms of learning.

> </DRAFT>
>
> This license is sort of a "By-NC-SA Plus" license. The three pluses are
> (1) noncommercial uses are not sufficient - uses must be noncommercial
> AND primarily facilitate learning, (2) a mechanism is imposed that
> establishes accountability for for the creation of derivative works.
>
> (3) is the big one. Rather than decide for the user whether to stick to
> formal educational institutions or not, the draft language passes the
> decision on to the user. This choice in effect creates two education
> licenses. You will see at http://creativecommons.org/projects/sampling
> that the Sampling licence takes two forms because of a similar option,
> with two distinct license names and two separate icons. I propose that
> we call one license the Open Education license, and the other the Formal
> Education License, and that we also use two separate icons to keep clear
> in users minds' which is which.
---------
Again, I see only one license as practical, the "Open Education License".

Best,
Sanford
>
> So, feedback please. Remember we're trying to arrive at a draft by next
> Wednesday. Thanks for your blood, sweat, and tears on this,
>
> David