development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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

This list is keeping me awake at night - here I am up at 4.30am in the
morning thinking about our cc education license!!! Absurd ;) 

Thanks, David and Stephen for moving us along. I just wanted to add a recent
suggestion to add under the No section: 

  - No, I want to restrict use of my work to only teachers, students, 
and others directly associated with a formal educational institution.

to:

  - No, I want to restrict use of my work to only teachers, students, 
and others directly associated with a formal educational institution, as
well as non-profit organisations where the express purpose of the
communication is for learning and education.

or something lawyerly-like.

I also wanted to say how much I've enjoyed the conversations that we've had
on this list - I seem to sway between desperately hating all of you, to very
deep respect for your beliefs. In the South African progressive learning
community, we try to call education 'learning', and teachers 'facilitators',
students 'learners'. We have a long way to go. These terms and their use are
currently very separate. I'm hoping that the beta will start people thinking
about what education or learning really means. 

On a separate issue, I'm sure Stephen and others have some good suggestions
about how we should track use of the license - perhaps we should also
propose a 'suggestion box' near the license on cc.org so that people can
post their wishes and express some of their specific needs if we're not
fulfilling them.

Best,

H.


At 10:47 PM 2/10/2004, you wrote:
Stephen Downes wrote:

> And lest this email be misunderstood, I would like to make
> it clear that in my conversations with David I have come to
> appreciate his knowledge, charity and sense of committment.
> Our understanding and our desires for this field are virtually
> identical, and we have more that unites us than that separates
> us. I think that nobody shares a greater desire to come to a
> mutual understanding than David and myself, and I think we
> both understand well enough the dangers of internecene
> conflict and take great care to stress our common goals,
> however this particular disagreement may be resolved.

Everyone,

I want to echo this sentiment. Stephen's heart is in the right place. (At
least I hope it is, because it's in the same place mine is.) We're arguing
so pationately because we so strongly believe in what we're trying to
accomplish. Let me try to recap where we are, how we got here, and where we
need to go.

Almost a year ago Creative Commons announced several new license projects -
Sampling, Developing Nations, and Education - to compliment their existing
portfolio of licenses - Public Domain dedication, By, By-SA, By-NC-SA, and
other permutations, and Founder's Copyright. Larry and Glenn believed that
an Education license was a good idea. So did I. So did several other people
we talked to.

Stephen has requested that a process be put on the table for how license
development would proceed. There has been a process on a webpage (hopefully
that is good enough) since at least June 2, 2003 according to the Wayback
Machine at archive.org. This same process which guides the development of
the education license is still available online at
http://creativecommons.org/discuss for all to see. This is the process CC
has identified for new license development, and this is the process we are
following. As you will have seen on the webpage, Public Discussion is the
core of the process.

Stephen says "Let's see a process for making this decision put on
the table. A process that ensures that people with a stake in the issue have
a bearing on the outcome." The last eight months of public discussion have
had a significant effect on the license. Look at the original draft Kevin
Rothman and I hammered out and presented (according to the CC process):

https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-education/2003-June/000001.html

This draft relied completely on the notion of an "educational institution"
as outlined in the US Copyright Act and elaborated by Nimmer. We tried very
hard to stretch the notion but you will see that this draft relies
completely on affiliation with an institution to determine whether a person
may make use of materials licensed under the then-proposed cc.edu.

Now fast-forward eight months. A new draft is available (I'm linking to the
one with options):
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-education/2004-February/000162.html
which takes a completely different approach to defining the class of
individuals who would qualify. Instead of relying on "institutional
affiliation," it attempts to grant permissions based on the "type of use" of
a resource an individual wants to make. I posit that this represents a
significant improvement to the license, and one that came about due to the
public discussion called for in the CC license development process.

Stephen further states that he would like "A process that amounts to
something more than just 'Creative Commons doing what it wants.'" Larry,
Glenn, myself, and as I understand their recent posts, the majority of list
participants are in favor of taking the next step with a draft of the
education license. I realize there are some on the list who, like Stephen,
honestly and genuinely believe that this is a conterproductive move. I
actually respect that perspective. But the majority of the list want to see
the license efforts move forward, as does CC. So we will cautiously go
forward, into *beta*, with a draft license.

I can think of nothing more democratic than moving the cc.edu draft into
public beta where *more* people can provide broader feedback on the draft.
Only 11 people have participated in the discussion around the new draft
(participation being generously defined as making at least one post). We
desparately need the eyeballs of real users on the draft. Let's face it --
each of us on this list are probably CC-By people if not public domain
people. We're not the target audience of cc.edu.

Heather has graciously offered to lead a research effort to understand
broader user perceptions of the beta license which will shape the direction
of the final version of the license. I hope those who have so actively
voiced their *opinions* (including me) about what users will think of the
draft license will join Heather in an empirical investigation of users
*actually* think of the beta license.

The beta license is *not* the final version! The license will not be
finalized until we gather and deal with comments from the beta period (e.g.,
http://creativecommons.org/license/sampling). In other words, members of
this august list, everyone who still cares several months from now is
invited back to relive this experience. =)

The question we should spend the next 24 hours discussing (since our
deadline is the end of the day tomorrow) is - which draft should go into
beta? With all respect to those who feel that we should not, the time is
past to discuss whether we should or shouldn't. We need to now start talking
about how we will. I sincerely hope that Stephen and others who believe we
are making a mistake will hang around long enough to help us gather and
interpret data, and empirically determine what the effects of the license
will be.

I believe that the option-enabled draft linked above is the right draft to
move into beta because it provides the broadest range of choice to users
(does this make me "pro-choice?" =). Heather has also argued for this
version in her most recent letter. Does anyone feel that the no-option
license should be the one which goes into beta? If so, why?

David
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