Comments on: Improving OER Messaging: A Heresy

By: John Martin

John Martin — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:09:20 +0000

Does “Public Domain” imply or denote any levels of national rights? Would it be be seen as limiting access to the public of only the country of origin?

By: Joss Winn

Joss Winn — Sat, 15 May 2010 13:46:28 +0000

Just to be clear, are you proposing that OERs should actually be placed in the public domain (i.e. CC0) or that reference to the ‘public domain’ is used as an easily understood short hand for a variety of CC licenses?

I would fully support the former, both for clarity and to undermine the need for attribution. I worry there is a danger that systematically and mechanistically making common the products of teachers’ work while still requiring attribution, may lead to a market for teachers based on a measured ‘impact factor’ of their reputation for producing OERs, while at the same time devaluing other pedagogic qualities required of teachers.

By: John Hilton III

John Hilton III — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:14:47 +0000

I could be wrong on this, but I was under the impression that things in the public domain still require attribution. That being the case, public domain has the advantage of being more easily understood than a CC license, even though some explanation will still be necessary.

By: Stian Håklev

Stian Håklev — Wed, 12 May 2010 23:11:34 +0000

Jared,
I like to separate between community norms, and legal norms. If you look at academia for example, plagiarism is one of the worst sins, but this has nothing to do with copyright, since you can “right it”, just by attributing where the ideas came from. And even if you don’t, you’re usually not breaking any laws, as long as you rewrite the argument with your own words.

In a similar vein, I hope that people who find the material I produce useful, and reuse it in some way, will give me attribution. However, I’m not sure if we really need to make this into a legal issue. And I can see places where it would be unnecessary, for example if you are putting 500 pictures together in a collage, and the attributions takes longer than the movie to roll over the screen.

(Full disclosure, I still use CC BY for most of my stuff, because I am so used to it. I am thinking about switching to CC 0 though. Unfortunately, Norway doesn’t let you “place things in the public domain”).

By: David Porter

David Porter — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:35:57 +0000

I’d argue for the plainest language possible that conveys the central notion.

Free to use or adapt.

By: Jeremy Browne

Jeremy Browne — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:16:30 +0000

I disagree, but as always, your great points deserve a full response: http://brownelearning.org/blog/ .

“The bottom line is that new and complex concepts have to be explained. There are effective and ineffective ways of explaining them, but, short of telepathy, we have to go through that explanatory process.”

By: Jared Stein

Jared Stein — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:14:22 +0000

Though the simplicity is alluring, I still prefer attaching the Attribution requirement, and would hate to see it lost simply because of ignorance. So while I can dig this approach one /could/ add “…or open-licensed” to the end of that 10-second pitch without convoluting the message.