development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[David <davidpalmer AT westnet.com.au>]

Greg London wrote:

> I would highly recommend avoiding a license that
> is specific to an age group, such as 18 and under.
> Learning and knowledge has no such boundaries,
> so why constrain it with an artificial limit?
> What do you then say to the 19 year old who wants
> to finish school or the 40 year old who wants to
> learn to read?
>  
Agreed!

A couple of reasons:

As I see it, the idea is to create a specific children's CC licence for 
their own creations.
The laptops just being a tool by way of which this is to be realised.

Although this would give children their own 'proprietary' sense, with 
'their own' licence, I believe that it also brings with it an implied 
sense of segregation.

I think a better way would be to employ the already established 
licences, but present them in a manner that children would be able to 
understand.
In this way, when these children do reach the age of majority, they 
already understand the format, and, even better, have a history of 
experiencing the less rigid copyright licencing format and its advantages.

They do need the protection of copyright because, as I have said in 
another setting, although it is the work of children, nefarious 
personalities, in fields such as Naive art, could well pilfer their 
work, and this could devastate a child if they were to see the evidence 
of it.

Children  /do /need copyright protection.
It is one application where I see copyright as having a useful function.

Their work is extremely valuable.

I see a problem in that children do not actually have any protection, 
under most national legal formats, to their own work (How arrogant is 
that?), but if we could arrange for a once-off permission format, where 
parents could give their consent on a central server somewhere, this 
would provide legal coverage within any national context.
With the 'once-off' format, instead of continuous permissions required 
for each work example, this gives empowerment back to the child also, 
instead of the continuous imposed condition of parental 'permission'.

> While the laptop program is targeting children now,
> there is no reason to believe that if it is succesful
> that it might be expanded to help others not in
> the age group 18 and under. The problem with a license
> with a project that accepts software contributions
> is that once a license is chosen, it becomes very,
> VERY, difficult to change the license.
>  
As I understand it, they are powered by Fedora?
And yes, there's definitely potential for the laptops to be employed 
throughout the communities concerned, although what would be more 
productive would be a central community server (in the local school?) 
with thin clients.

> <snip>
>
> For non-software works, I'd recommend dual-licensing
> the works under GNU-FDL and CC-SA.
>  
'Agreed again', said David sitting at his Debian SID machine, but I 
think the main thrust here is not the software that the machines are 
running on, or documentation of such, but the children's creations that 
the machines are going to be employed to facilitate.

I think that what the original poster is asking for is ideas, and even 
some help in rewriting the licence formats and FAQ so that they are 
easily accessible to children.
I think that's why the original poster brought this to the CC-Edu list, 
because the educational mindset here would be what was required to 
facilitate communication with children, with an eye to the rewriting and 
other aspects of presentation to children, within a format that they 
could understand.
Regards,

David.