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cc-education - Re: [cc-education] A new hope for cc.edu

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Subject: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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  • From: Stephen Downes <stephen AT downes.ca>
  • To: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons <cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-education] A new hope for cc.edu
  • Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:53:16 -0300

Hiya,

When the CC-Edu proposal was first raised in 2003, the possibility of a special 'education' license was discussed at length. As in the case of the current round of discussions, such a license was always envisioned as applying to educational institutions.

This proposal met with substantial opposition because it would offer for free materials to institutions that would charge tuition, but not offer for free the same materials for people who were learning on their own. It was essentially, therefore, a means of subsidizing institutional learning at the expense of personal learning.

Two years later this has not changed.

The By-NC-SA rebranding was a compromise position. It was approached because most of what we were trying to capture with an educational license was captured by these terms. It allowed persona learning, and it allowed educational institutions to use the materials without charge.

It was true then, and is true today, that most educational institutions are considered non-commercial. This definition is arrived at not by looking at the nature of each transaction, which would be absurd, but by looking at the narture of the institution. There is a commonly known and widely used distinction between enterprises that are non-commercial and those that are commercial, between organizations that exist to provide a public service and those that exist in order to generate revenue.

It is true that overtly commercial enterprises are not considered 'educational' under the proposed rebranding of By-NC-SA. That such enterprises are considered 'educational' at all is more marketing than matter of fact. They are first and foremost profit-making enterprises, and therefore ought to pay their own way. The term 'educational', when applied to institutions, ought to apply only to those institutions founded for the specific and only purpose of providing an education, and not those that use education as a means of making money.

We understand the distinction between the University of North Carolina and the DMX Zone CBT provider, between the University of California and the University of Phoenix, and it is sophistry to pretend that we do not. And this distinction is drawn precisely by the 'non-commercial' attribute, and none other.

What we have here is what I warned of in 2003 - the commercialization of the proposed CC-Education license. That is what the blurring of commercial and non-commercial enterprises under the guise of 'education' accomplishes. This to me shows all the more the urgency of ensuring that no Creative Commons license exist that allow institutions license to do what individuals cannot, indeed, of ensuring that 'educational' content means, explicitly, non-commercial content.


-- Stephen



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__________________________________________________________________

Stephen Downes ~ Senior Researcher ~ E-Learning Research Group
National Research Council Canada ~ Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
http://www.downes.ca ~ stephen AT downes.ca
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