open content

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…

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