Creative Commons » CEL

Dealing with Legally Incompatible Content in OER

Jane Park — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:08:40 +0000

Last month, ccLearn published “Otherwise Open: Managing Incompatible Content in OER“. For those of you who never got around to reading the paper, it basically provides an overview of the problem posed by the incorporation of “all-rights-reserved” materials into otherwise open educational resources (OER). It also explores ways of dealing with this problem and the trade-offs involved in relying on jurisdictional copyright exceptions and limitations, such as fair use or fair dealing. As the paper is intended to spur further inquiry and research globally, “Otherwise Open” does not offer concrete solutions to the problem right now.

However, the average OER creator cannot afford to wait, especially if they value their work as part of a global learning commons. In order for OER to be global, the copyright of the OER must be viable across jurisdictions. OER that are available under a CC license are global, as CC licenses are effective worldwide. But the inclusion of third party content that is not under the same terms of the license changes the global nature of OER, potentially walling it off from use in other countries. Thus, ccLearn has developed some practical recommendations and alternatives for those OER creators who are concerned with the global reach and impact of their works.

ccLearn Recommendations – Dealing with Legally Incompatible Content in OER

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are defined by the use of a Creative Commons license and are generally created by those who would like to share their work globally. However, some creators find the need to consider the costs and benefits of incorporating third-party materials with incompatible licenses into their “otherwise open” OER. This document recommends ways of managing or avoiding the problems that will arise.”

This and all ccLearn Recommendations and productions are licensed CC BY.

OER Copyright Survey now closed

Jane Park — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:49:54 +0000

Thanks to all of you who filled out the OER Copyright Survey! The survey is now closed, with many thoughtful responses. Again, we appreciate your responses, among which was an overarching request to have the survey translated. We definitely hope and intend to broaden the survey to more countries and in more languages in the future, and are open to ideas and support. Please contact us if you, an individual you know, or a project/organization you are in touch with is interested in participating in the next stages of research. Participation can be anything from simply responding to the survey in your own language or helping to translate, organize, or analyze the data.

In the meantime, please take advantage of the user group currently active on OpenEd to continue the discussion. Also feel free to review and contribute to the survey notes.

Copyright Exceptions and Limitations in OER

Jane Park — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:12:38 +0000

For those of you interested in knowing how Copyright Exceptions and Limitations (known as Fair Use in the US) might affect open educational resources, there will be a working session on CEL at OCWC Global 2009 in Monterrey, Mexico next month. OCWC Global 2009 is the OpenCourseWare Consortium’s first international conference of its kind. The session on International Copyright Exceptions and Limitations may include current US work exploring issues of Fair Use in OER, but is, naturally, a much larger conversation encompassing many different legal jurisdictions. From the CEL wiki,

“The realm of copyright exceptions and limitations is vast and complex. Every legal jurisdiction has its own formulation of what behaviors are exempt from copyright restrictions, and we have only begun to explore the question of how open licensing affects those formulations.”

Since we have yet to sort out which aspects of the CEL landscape ccLearn can reasonably investigate, and which partners are interested in being collaborators, we hope this working session will result in some great initial inquires into this international issue. To join a discussion of some of these topics, contribute to the wiki! You can also find out more at the OCW Blog.