CC0 is a Creative Commons project designed to promote and protect the public domain by 1) enabling authors to easily waive their copyrights in particular works and to communicate that waiver to others, and 2) providing a means by which any person can assert that there are no copyrights in a particular work, in a way that allows others to judge the reliability of that assertion.

Permissible Restrictions

Apart from these allowed restrictions, the license must not include clauses that limit essential freedoms. Especially, it must not specify any usage restrictions (such as prohibiting commercial use of the work, restricting use depending on political context, etc.).

• Attribution of authors: Attribution protects the integrity of an original work, and provides credit and recognition for authors. A license may therefore require attribution of the author or authors, provided such attribution does not impede normal use of the work. For example, it would not be acceptable for the license to require a significantly more cumbersome method of attribution when a modified version of the licensed text is distributed.
• Transmission of freedoms: The license may include a clause, often called copyleft or share-alike, which ensures that derivative works themselves remain free works. To this effect, it can for example require that all derivative works are made available under the same free license as the original.
• Protection of freedoms: The license may include clauses that strive to further ensure that the work is a free work, notably by enforcing some of the conditions specified in the paragraphs below: for example, access to source code, or prohibition of technical measures restricting essential freedoms.

This paradox has been rolling around in the back of my head / subconscious for months now, but something about reading this section in this context crystalized the problem in my tiny brain: how can a community so focused on freedom approve of any restrictions? Specifically, when expressing concern about restrictions making it difficult to reuse works, how can this community approve of the copyleft or share-alike concept?

Legal Hatfields and McCoys

The biggest legal problem facing the open educational movement is license incompatibility, as I discussed recently. For example, the millions of articles in Wikipedia and the 1.6 million media files in the Wikimedia Commons cannot be remixed with the thousands of courses and tens of thousands of media files coming from university OCW projects around the world. Why not? Because the “copyleft” scheme of the GFDL says that all derivative works must be licensed with the GFDL, and the “copyleft” scheme of the CC By-NC-SA license says that all derivative works must be licensed with the CC By-NC-SA. Hence, these materials cannot be remixed. It should be quite obvious that the sole culprit preventing this reuse and remixing is the copyleft restriction that is so happily permitted under the FreedomDefined definition of “free” (as well as the Free Software and many other definitions).

Although I am a huge fan of the open source definition and the free software definition, from first principles of freedom and openness I can see no reason to approve of any restrictions. In the free software definition, Stallman writes:

For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms.

If copyleft were implemented in this manner, then the Creative Commons licenses and GFDL would be compatible with one another. But copyleft is not implemented in this manner. The text of Stallman’s own GFDL reads:

You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License.

Creative Commons similarly talks the right talk in the their human-readble definition of ShareAlike, “If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.” But in the Legal Code version of the document we read:

You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under: (i) the terms of this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 US) (“Applicable License”).

So, in both the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons contexts, copyleft or share-alike means “if you’re creating a derivative work, you have to use our license – and only our license.”

Why, when we are so worried about preserving freedoms, do we prohibit choice on the part of downstream users as to how they can license derivatives works they make? Why don’t we want to protect that user’s freedom to choose how to license his derivative work, into which he put substantial effort? The copyleft approach of both the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons makes creators of derivative works second-class citizens. And these are the people we claim to be primarily interested in empowering. I can’t stress this point enough: the ShareAlike clause of the CC licenses and the CopyLeft tack of the GFDL rob derivers of the basic freedom to choose which license they will apply to their derived work. ShareAlike and CopyLeft privilege creators while directing derivers to the back of the bus.

CC Infighting

The following image shows which CC licenses are compatible with one another; in other words, it shows what content can be legally remixed with what other content.

You should notice that on this 10×10 grid there are only 33 smiley faces. In other words, only 1/3 of Creative Commons’ own licenses are compatible in terms of cross-license remixing. It’s difficult to believe, but true. This is so difficult to believe, and the detail so confusing that almost all people (and many people in the OER world, for that matter) simply believe that any page sporting a CC logo is compatible with any other in terms of remix-ability. Legally, of course, this is not true in the majority of cases. And, “But they both say Creative Commons at the bottom!” is not a viable legal defense. Do we really believe that “normal users” can navigate this morass? How often have you personally consulted a chart like this when remixing CC-licensed content? How often have you instead just shrugged your shoulders and said, “who cares?”

Public Domain as the PeaceMaker

You should next notice in the CC compatibility graphic that there is only one license that is compatible for cross-license remixing with all Creative Commons licenses (and with the GFDL, although the graphic doesn’t show it): the Public Domain license. Technically, this isn’t a license – it is a dedication of copyrights to the public domain. It is a formal rejection of all restrictions, and a complete freeing and opening of content. It is the ultimate expression of the ideals of openness and freedom. So why do we settle for only four freedoms? Why isn’t our goal to have all OERs eventually exist in the public domain? If we really care about ease of reuse, if we really respect creators of derivative works, and if we really want to see the open education movement succeed, we should have the public domain as our final goal.

Now, DON’T MISUNDERSTAND. I’m not saying that everyone who isn’t using a public domain dedication as of 5:00p tonight is an evil loser. I’m still very much a believer in and respecter of a step-by-step path into full participation in the open education community of practice. However, once upon a time I believed that the end legal goal of the progression was a license of some sort. Now I believe that the real legal end goal for open educational resources should be dedication to the public domain.

So the obvious question, then, is when will Mr. Big Talker’s (my) courses on USU OCW be placed in the public domain? Very soon now. More about that in another post.

Several interesting things in this report:

• First, the two top-rated sources of digital content, including all commercial and other sources, were Google Search and Wikipedia. MIT OCW places fourth. McGraw Hill and all the other proprietary content publishers are “clustered in another tier below the leaders” in terms of user satisfaction (p. 40).
• As a content management platform, Wikipedia beats out WebCT, Blackboard, and DSpace by an average of almost a full point (on a five point scale). “The strong usage and showing of Wikis indicates that the Web 2.0 phenomenon – use of more collaboration and
  collaborative authoring – is blazing a path in higher education” (p. 38).
• On the course management side, Moodle beats out WebCT and Blackboard by a full half point with a third place finish. Apparently eCollege and Angel users are extremely loyal. Sakai isn’t even on the map.
• From the Top Findings section (p. 8): “Google Search, Apple iPod, and Wikipedia placed in the top ten list for satisfaction, indicating that non-education specific technologies are being perceived, by those ithat incorporate them, as adding value to the educational experience.” That is, their satisfaction scores were so high as to be in the top ten of all products reviewed across all categories.

Overall an interesting skim…

Why am I mad? Because the state of Utah just completed a bid process to license and buy support for an LMS to be used at all state schools. And after phone calls and emails with a company who will remain un-named (why do we protect the guilty?) who assured me they would put in a bid to install / configure / support Sakai for the state, today I heard that they never bothered submitting a bid. I could spit I’m so angry. I could have worked with any of a handful of companies to get this OSS solution in the competition, but I naively believed this vendor’s word that they would put in a bid. And now it’s all said and done, and Sakai wasn’t even in the mix. I actually threw something across the room today when I heard.

Our only hope now is that the whole Bb/WebCT conglomerate madness will force the state to reevaluate its position and open another bid. You can bet I’ll be following up a lot closer with the next vendor I choose to encourage to apply. (And since when do businesses need convincing that a statewide, multimillion dollar contract is a thing they should want???)

I’m seeing double.

The focus on scalability scares me because it only focuses on reaching lots of people, on reaching large numbers of people, on reaching the majority of people.

The amount of commitment necessary to reach all as opposed to many seems qualitatively different to me. I’m afraid that the focus on scaling, and talk about how great and worthy reaching the majority of people is, will allow instructional technologists to feel like they’re off the hook for reaching the few, the small numbers of people, the minority.

So yes, the work we are all doing on scaling is important. It’s foundational. But lately the people I’ve heard talk about scaling are talking about it like its the end goal. It’s not. It gets us to the majority of people. These same methods don’t get us to the minority. Things like eGranery get us to the minority.

We have to go beyond scalability in our thinking. Beyond reaching the majority. We have to think about reaching everyone. And its going to require very different thinking than the scalability thinking going on right now.

The rebranding strategy has become increasingly common for CC (c .f. the new wiki license beta), and rebranding is now an option for us. I therefore propose we rebrand the By-NC-SA as the Creative Commons Education License, and create a special commons deed for anyone using the license (i.e., add some contextual language to the human readable part of the license – e.g., the way the new wiki license beta has been handled).

Thoughts? Please send them to the listserv at http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-education.

No it does not. The license is a legal document, and “educational” has a definite meaning in legal history and past court decisions (granted the interpretation is US specific). Part of the beauty of working with Creative Commons on this project is that, instead of receiving no legal support from the community but pushing ahead with OpenContent licenses, “real lawyers” do reviews of literature and can say with some precision what “educational” means in the US legal system. Stephen and others may not like what it means, but that doesn’t change it.

I believe there is already a significant and stable “common understanding” of the term “educational” not just in legal history, but in the average person’s head. Fortunately these two understandings agree (as is not always the case with copyright law; cf Jessica Litman).

No one is more interested in facilitating informal learning than I am, (cf “OSLO Group”:http://oslo.usu.edu/). But legal documents aren’t the place to attempt to win mindshare for new interpretations of terms with decades of legal history. These battles have to be fought in the minds of people first. Only when popular opinion of “educational” has moved will courts be likely to reinterpret what “educational” means to them.

Such a license favour educational institutions at the expense of individual learners

This license bends over backwards to extend every possible right to individual learners within the constraints of the meaning of “educational”. In many educational use licenses, use is only permitted to institutional employees acting in their formal capacity. In other words, students in a peer study group would be prohibited from using materials legally. cc.edu gives rights to use “in a manner that is directly related to and of material assistance to the primary teaching and learning activities of an educational institution,” “solely for educational purposes.” Teachers, TAs, and peers, in sessions formal or informal, would be able to legally use cc.edu material to support individual learning.

Such a license opens the door to the pervasive monitoring of ‘educational use’

I agree completely with this statement, but am also quite confused by the sentiment of it. First, Stephen seems to imply that the cc.edu is inferior to the standard cc license in that cc.edu implies monitoring while cc does not. However, cc.edu opens the door to monitoring of educational use only to the same degree that the standard cc license opens the door to monitoring attribution, commercial use, and redistribution of derivative works under like licenses. Releasing material under any agreement implies monitoring. The only nonmonitoring option available in the distribution of creative works is dedication to the public domain. I think I must have missed the point here.

This criticism seems particularly odd given Stephen’s own work in technically enabling the “specification of use conditions”:http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/view.cgi?dbs=Article&key=1041124246&format=full for learning objects.

Such a license allows commercial publishers to push more legitimate open and free content from the marketplace by protecting the commercial sale of such content in other domains.

Again, I’m confused by a couple of things. None of the following will make sense if I’ve completely misunderstood the criticism. First, it doesn’t seem that open content can be pushed from the marketplace because its not part of the marketplace. The economics of open content are completely different than those of the marketplace, and while high quality open content may cause commercial publishers to think twice about creating for-fee versions, in the history of open source software I don’t see many examples of the existence of for-pay versions slowing down developers in their pursuit to build free alternatives.

Second, does anyone expect commercial publishers to be involved in using the cc.edu at all? Why would they? At first one might imagine commercial publishers using cc.edu licensed material as a “loss leader” advertisement to showcase commercial content. However, once the material was licensed under cc.edu, then no commercial use can be made of the content without express consent. Would commercial publishers really do this to themselves (put themselves in the position of having to explicitly authorize everyone who ends up buying “the rest” of the material to use the cc.edu material commercially as well)? Do commercial publishers want to authorize people to make freely shared derivative works of their “potentially commercial” content? I don’t believe commercial publishers will get within a mile of cc.edu.

Moreover, there is no mechanism or principle for deciding on the nature or domain of such an educational license: it will be, essentially, whatever David Wiley says it will be.

If a listserv with a “heated discussion” (as Stephen calls it) is not a mechanism for deciding the nature of the cc.edu, I don’t know what is. If cc.edu was going to be whatever I wanted, there would have been no listserv, no discussion, and no drafts — just an announcement of cc.edu v1.0.

At the same time, it is true that there is no mechanism for an individual to veto the cc.edu idea, which I think is what Stephen would like. But this all feels like the pages of history to me now. Richard Stallman was opposed to OpenContent; the project struggled to get off the ground over his oppositions, but finally managed to do so.

What I don’t understand is why Stephen feels like he should have veto power over another person’s project. I am just a completely opposed to his work on facilitating “fair compensation for RLO creation in distributed LO repositories”:http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/view.cgi?dbs=Article&key=1041124246&format=full because it legitimizes, facilitates, and encourages the creation and distribution of commercial learning objects. But do I have the right to demand veto power over this or anyone else’s work? No. Will I ever publicly call for him to drop his interest and pursue something else? No. I may criticize, as the academic tradition allows, but I would never presume to exercise dominion over another person’s research agenda.

Some people may consider my comments to be like “hand grenades tossed your way from the peanut gallery,” but I don’t think the establishment of free content as some kind of charity from (and at the beck and call of) commercial publishers to be a good thing, and while the publishers would no doubt find the free publicity an educational CC license would bring to be worthwhile, it would in the long run come at the expense of students.

As I’ve said, I don’t think commercial publishers will come within a mile of cc.edu. Even if they did, it would only mean a net gain in open educational content.

David Wiley may have, as he says, a “personal itch,” but some itches should perhaps not be scratched without due consideration of the consequences.

I’m only pursuing cc.edu because I’ve considered the consequences at some length. I wouldn’t invest the time and effort of all this debate (especially when I can just “do whatever I want”) if I didn’t believe the payoff to be significant.