Creativecommons

It’s a much better name than cc.edu: Creative Commons is seeking an Executive Director for CC Learn, a new division that will focus on education, broadly defined — from kindergarten to graduate school, to lifelong learning. The mission of this new division will be to promote vigorous networks of Open Educational Resources: materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use, modify and re-use for teaching, learning and research. ...

Here’s a draft of a chapter I am writing for an upcoming book on open education. It’s (supposedly) written from some time decades in the future, and is part autobiography and part history. I’d love any feedback you have… ...

Know how you get in one of those moods where everything reminds you of the same thing? I was reading Lessig’s commentary today on the Copyright Office’s recent report on orphan works. In the report, “a work is deemed an ‘orphan’ if you can’t discover the copyright owner after a ‘reasonably diligent search.’” Larry goes on to comment: The trigger to the Copyright Office’s Orphan Works Remedy is whether a copyright owner can be found with a “reasonably diligent search.â€? That standard is just mush. The report outlines six factors to be considered in determining whether a search is “reasonably diligent.â€? The effect of this complexity is simply make-work for lawyers. Libraries and archives will be unfairly burdened. Users won’t be able to achieve any real security. ...

I recently received an email from Hal Abelson (you never know who’s reading your blog, I guess) in response to my post about MIT and CC’s differing interpretations of the NC clause. He reiterated that the Proposed Best Practice Guidelines To Clarify The Meaning Of “Noncommercialâ€? are only a draft and do not represent CC’s interpretation of the NC clause, and assured me that MIT and CC do not take different stances on the interpretation. Hal can speak from a position of authority since he is both the Founding Director of Creative Commons and a member of the MIT faculty and the MIT OCW advisory board. ...

Preface: You will please notice that this is neither a “the NC clause is evil” post nor an “MIT OCW is evil” post. If you were hoping for either of those, then ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for - you can go about your business; move along.’ In doing some research for a book chapter I’m writing, I came across the following oddity: CC and MIT OCW have diametrically opposed interpretations of the meaning of the NC clause of CC’s own licenses. ...

On my other blog I’ve posted a half-baked proposal for creating Attribution Plugins for the CC licenses… I’ll be curious to hear what y’all think.