development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Wouter Vanden Hove <wouter.vanden.hove AT pandora.be>]

I'll answer for 2 licenses:

The CC "OPEN-EDU" License: 

  1) rebranding of BY-SA, 
  2) A colored logo that is the same as the BY-SA. (Green light to
everyone)
  3) This would be acceptible to all free software and open content
projects.
  4) This provides an easy to advocate "upgrade-path" from EDU-ONLY




The CC "EDU-ONLY" License: 

  1) BY-SA-NC+ "Educational Only"-clause
  2) color-logo:  giving a visual warning that there is a discrimination
in field of endeavour. 
(Green light to teachers,Red Light to almost eveyone else)

  3) This would be acceptible to teachers not wanting to license more 
liberally

  4) it's better than all-rights-reserved , but doesn't not interfere
with the dynamics of real open content projects. It's not "open
content", so it should be clearly marked not to look like open content.
Even just to avoid all kinds of unvoluntary infringements.

  5) People that have previously choosen another CC License like BY,
BY-SA, BY-SA-NC are not tempted to relicense to EDU-ONLY just because
the license contains the label "EDU", if there is an OPEN-EDU
alternative.





> 1. require attribution
YES, "BY"

4. require that modified works - if distributed -  be distributed under 
> the same license
YES, "SA"

So far the OPEN-EDU and the EDU-ONLY are the same



Further clauses for the EDU-ONLY

> 3. allow only uses primarily and purposively intended to facilitate learning
YES, 

I guess that the whole point of the license,  but is is rather vague
language.


> 2. disallow commercial uses
YES, follows from 3.

YES to teaching (who doesn't get paid to teach?)
No to selling print-outs with a profit-incentive.





> 5. require that modified works - if distributed - be distributed with a 
> mechanism for determining what changes have been made to the original
NO, too difficult.

How many original works keep detailed log-files of all changes? Then why
make it a requirement if others create a derivative work?

A linkback requirement should be enough, the rest should be part of the
development infrastructure like CVS or other versioning systems.



> 6. allow use by anyone whose use meets the above guidelines regardless 
> of affiliation

DEPENDS 

If you have an educational resource under BY-SA-NC
and you have an educational resource under BY-SA-NC+
 "allow only uses primarily and purposively intended to facilitate
learning" +  "regardless of affiliation"

Then what do you actualy forbid? 
Cultural uses? Artistic Uses? Personal Expression uses?
Would you sue these people for infringement?

If you have a math text-book, can you make a derived work from it that
is not educational oriented? Is this likely to happen in practice, or is
it just a theoretical possibility?

"regardless of affiliation" could then better be mapped to "BY-SA-NC"


So NO.

> 
> 7. provide an option which allows the licensor to restrict use to 
> individuals affiliated with an educational institution only
YES, this should be the main EDU-ONLY clause

According to David, lawyers say this is what "educational use" means in
the traditional way of thinking.

Otherwise what's the point of creating a new CC License
1) that deviates firmly from any "open source" or "open content"
definition or other CC-License.
2) is not in line with what lawyers or the law say

> 
> 8. expand 7. above to include individuals affiliated with non-profit 
> organizations with primarily educational missions in addition to 
> individuals affiliated with educational institutions

Don't know. What does the law says about "non-profit 
organizations with primarily educational missions"?

YES, if lawyers according to traditional thinking say they are treated
the same as "educational institutions".

NO, otherwise.


-------------------------------


Discussion and voting here has shown that "educational use" mean many
different things to many people.

The CC Project has about 11 combinations of BY-SA-NC-ND Options
I think any single one EDU-license will make always make a majority
unhappy.

Why not weed out the educationally unsuited combinations (like ND) from
the 11 possible combinations, and reduce them two 2-3 like:

BY-SA   (OPEN-EDU)
BY-SA-NC  (regardless of affiliation)
BY-SA-NC-EDU (EDU-ONLY: restrict to individuals affiliated with an
educational institution only)


I don't believe the stepping-stone theory will work if we don't provide
clear stepping stones ourselves *within* the CC EDU Licensing Project.


Wouter Vanden Hove

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