Tag Archive for 'NC'

ShareAlike, the Public Domain, and Privileging

There have been a number of comments on my recent post about license compatibility problems. I want to address two specific, related comments…
Continue reading ‘ShareAlike, the Public Domain, and Privileging’

Noncommercial Isn’t the Problem, ShareAlike Is

Preparing for my fall course “Introduction to Open Education” (more about that coming soon in another post), I’ve been thinking hard about licensing and the “pro-freedom” camp. Wikeducator and FreedomDefined.org have several interesting pieces, including WikiEducator’s Free Content Defined and FreedomDefined.org’s The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License. I found myself in complete agreement with statements such as, “Sadly, much of the world’s knowledge is locked behind copyright and consequently access to this knowledge is restricted, especially for the majority of citizens in the developing world… The definition of Free Cultural works is based on the premise that the easier it is to re-use and derive works, the richer our cultures become.” But then I was particularly struck by the section on “Permissible Restrictions” from the Wikieducator tutorial… Continue reading ‘Noncommercial Isn’t the Problem, ShareAlike Is’

Why Universities Choose NC, and What You Can Do

Reading Wayne Macintosh’s feature on WikiEducator got me thinking again about some people’s dissatisfaction with those projects that use the NC clause. (I’m not a fan of the NC clause, but I have never projected these negative feelings onto institutions or faculty who adopt the clause.) So I started asking myself - why do universities adopt the NC clause for their OER projects in the first place? And if we wish they wouldn’t use the NC clause, what can we do about it? Continue reading ‘Why Universities Choose NC, and What You Can Do’