Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris AT sfu.ca>]

Thanks for your comments, Andrew - my comments below.

On 2012-05-08, at 11:26 AM, Andrew Rens wrote:

> 
> 
> On 8 May 2012 12:46, Heather Morrison <hgmorris AT sfu.ca> wrote:
> As a reminder, proposals for NC 4.0 can be found on the wiki. It might be 
> helpful to move discussion forward to refer to the proposals on the wiki, 
> or to create new ones for discussion.
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/NonCommercial
> 
> My proposal to clarify noncommercial addresses a number of the questions 
> coming up in discussion in recent days (from my viewpoint). Does anyone 
> have specific feedback on this proposal?
> 
> 
> There is a trend for the Open Education Community to use CC By for open 
> educational resources. For example Connexions uses CC By. Siyavula, the 
> most successful open school textbook project in the world uses CC By.

A local open educational repository offers only the CC-BY license. The 
largest community that actively participates in this service gets around this 
by placing NC licenses on the actual works. 

> 
> The explicit reference to education in a future non-commercial license 
> would divert some licensors from using CC By resulting in fewer free 
> culture licensed works.

This is speculation. It may also be the case that some creators of 
educational resources would be more likely to use CC licenses. Or that both 
scenarios will happen. 

> 
> 
> NC Proposal No. 12 (Heather Morrison): NC Proposal No.12 Define NC to 
> specifically allow educational uses. "(f) NonCommercial means not intended 
> for re-sale or re-use of the Licensed Work for private monetary 
> compensation (for example, as a means to attract advertising revenue). For 
> purposes of this Public License, the exchange of the Licensed Work by 
> digital file-sharing or similar means is NonCommercial provided there is no 
> payment of monetary compensation in connection with the exchange. For the 
> avoidance of doubt, educational use - teaching and learning - is 
> Noncommercial, and permitted by this Public License, while including the 
> content in a package intended for sale to educational institutions for 
> profit is Commercial, and prohibited by this Public License.
> 
> 
> This would replace the problem of defining non commercial with the problem 
> of defining educational use or 'teaching and learning'.
> 
> Is that either teaching or learning, or must both teaching and learning 
> take place?
> Is that intended to be auto-dicactic use?
> 
> Is use by British American Tobacco for in house training teaching and 
> learning?
>  Is use by Kaplan.com teaching and learning? 
> Is use by  Pearson incorporates the work into a textbook that it sells is 
> that still educational use? 

No, according to the language of this proposal:  "provided there is no 
payment of monetary compensation in connection with the exchange". 

> What if Harvard incorporates the work into a cousepack that it sells to its 
> students, is that teaching and learning? 

See above.

> And if Harvard sells the coursepack to all comers is that taching and 
> learning?

See above.

> If I use the work on my blog that also earns ad revenue and I deem my blog 
> to a teaching blog then is that permitted? 

Something that is "deemed to be a teaching blog" suggests that it is not in 
fact a teaching blog. If the primary purpose is ad revenue, than no, this 
would not be permitted. 

> 
> 
> Under NC #8 someone commented: "In educational use, I often want to have 
> CC-NC licensed materials printed through print-on-demand companies. It is 
> unclear whether this is commercial or not, since the printing company is 
> certainly making a profit."

This is potentially a very important point. There is a business model that 
involves free to read online, but the service makes its revenue through such 
means as print-on-demand. I'd like to see this addressed, but not sure the 
best way to do so. Suggestions? 

> 
> It us unclear whether "including the content in a package intended for sale 
> to educational institutions for profit is Commercial" permits use of print 
> on demand or not.
> 
> This proposal does however avoid license proliferation. 
>  
> Web-based or other discovery services that rely on advertising revenue, 
> such as search engines, may use advertising IN CONNECTION WITH THEIR 
> SERVICES in connecting searchers to this content; this does not constitute 
> commercial use of the content. Advertising that constitutes exploitation of 
> the content for commercial purposes, such as advertising inserted into a 
> derivative, advertising that readers are forced to watch before viewing the 
> content, creating the impression of sponsorship, or advertising that 
> implies that the creator endorses the advertised product, constitutes 
> commercial use and is prohibited by this license."
> 
> I would also like to point to NC Proposal No. 9 (Brian Carver), to: "Create 
> a new CC license, NC-EDU, that prohibits non-commercial uses, but allows 
> educational uses".
>  
> 1. This will result in  license proliferation.
> 
> 2. There is a trend in the OER community to use CC By licences, Connexions 
> uses CC By and Siyavula, the most successful open school textbook project 
> uses CC By.
> If a specific education licence were created this would divert some 
> licensors from CC By thus resulting in fewer Free Culture works.
> 
> 3. An education license is likely to suffer from the same marketing problem 
> as the development license, potential licensors thought that the license 
> was intended for use by developing countries, rather than by anyone who 
> wanted to allow use in a developing country. CC ultimately deprecated the 
> development license. Licensors intent on preventing what they believe to be 
> commercial use of their works would think that educational institutions 
> should use the educational license.
> 
> 4. This would raise the difficult issue of coherently defining education.
> 
> Both 12 and 9 address a desire for NC without impeding educational use. The 
> main difference between the two approaches is that one creates a new 
> license (#9), while the other clarifies the NC definition (#12).
> 
> best,
> 
> Heather Morrison
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Rens
> 
> ex africa semper aliquid novi (http://aliquidnovi.org)
> 
> 
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