Open Ed - Week 7: Licensing Open Educational Resources

Based on the readings and assignment for week 7 in the Introduction to Open Education ...

As I noted at the end of my post last week, it is likely that most supporters of the OER movement feel the more "open" the work, the greater the value. Further, I agree with Brian Lamb's observation during his 2007 Open Ed keynote that when a person sees a CC at the bottom of a page, he or she likely thinks ... "oh, that guy is not a jerk" and considers the work freely available to use, modify and re-use as he or she sees fit. Unfortunately, this misinterpretation can lead to potential nasty repercussions. However, how often does this misinterpretation come into play? Do the variations in license provisions impact how users actually use content? To answer these questions, it is necessary to consider how open content is used and how this use is affected by open content licensing.

Open Content Use: To this point, almost everything I have read about the open education movement is written from the perspective of the content producers - the ones putting out content for others to use. Just as they consider what repository will be best, they consider what license will be best. However, the questions this week begin to shift the focus to what license is best for users of the content. More specifically, what license provisions best support the users of open content? What follows is based on my assumption of how open content is used and how the various license provisions impact that use. These assumptions are based solely on how I image how open content is used based on my experience and the stories that were shared in hallway chats with content producers at the OpenEd conference - obviously a biased and unscientifically derived viewpoint. However, at this point, I am not aware of any other measures of use.


It appears to me that producers of open content may be off the mark in their assumptions of how learners use their content. It is my interpretation that most producers of content think users will approach the material in the same manner as students in a class ... digest all of the material in a syllabus, read all of the content, take the exercises, etc. Further, many people envision the possibilities of mash-ups that create amazing new derivative works. However, I am not convinced that is how users actually use these works. In hallway chats with the good folks at the UK Open University, they noted that the vast majority of hits to their Open Ed site come from Google searches where people are searching for content and find the Open University course material. Users spend a few minutes on the site and then are off to other places.

It appears to me (from my admittedly biased and unscientific "research") that users gather the content like squirrels gather nuts. The content is taken back to the learners own environment (whether it be an informal or formal one) where it is digested or stored. I doubt that the learner spends much time on the content producer's site. They get what they want and they are gone  - back to the den ... er ... learning environment to chew on what they gathered. Further, I haven't seen much evidence that suggests much slicing / dicing or derivative works are created from the open content. Instead, I feel the most likely use of open content is "read only" access. Therefore, it appears that users are primarily concerned with access to high quality freely available information.

The Key Licensing Provisions: If my assumptions are correct and access is the primary concern of users, then how do the key Creative Commons provisions affect them? The following chart highlights four key provisions under the various Creative Commons and GFDL licenses. Through a review of various works and publications listed in the syllabus, as well as from recent blog posts from Stephen Downes and David Wiley, I have summarized the following: 1) the paper napkin definitions of the Creative Commons provisions from the perspective of both the producer and user, 2) possible talking points in support of the provisions, and 3) possible talking points against the provisions.



Implications for open content: As we found in this week's reading and in the summary above, some view these provisions as protections of the openness of the work, while others see them as restrictions on use. This disconnect may be due to the difference in perspective between content producers and content users. However, this disconnect may also be due to different assumptions about how open content is actually used - which to me is the most important, yet largely unexamined, consideration.

The consideration of use also leads to my reflection on the major question of the week - Can a work that incorporates these Creative Commons licensing restrictions support "open" education? Based on my assumptions about use, as well as my appreciation of the need for licensing trade-offs, I think so. As I mentioned in last week's reflection, making content freely available to users involves practical trade-offs to support the needs of content producers and the needs of the content users. I fully understand why some content producers would want restrictions to control how their work is used. As I touched on last week, the restrictions can serve as an incentive to producers by protecting those who have invested time and money in creating the work. By accepting these provisions as part of a trade-off, content users gain far greater access to works which would otherwise be hidden away or available only for a fee. Like all trade-offs, you win some things, but so does the other side. Here is my take on some of the key trade-offs and the implications for open education:

• Derivative works / Share alike: Clearly, full support for remixing and derivative works does not exist under the current mix of licenses. As shown in the chart below from the Creative Commons.org web site, there are substantial license incompatibility issues when works of different licenses are re-mixed. If most licenses are incompatible with each other, how can Creative Commons be considered "supportive" of the open education movement? My answer lies not in an assessment of the licenses, but in my assessment of the actual needs of the user.

	by	by-nc	by-nc-nd	by-nc-sa	by-nd	by-sa
by
by-nc
by-nc-nd
by-nc-sa
by-nd
by-sa

• Commercial vs Non-Commercial: Regarding the non-commercial provisions, I also don't think this is a major issue to the vast majority of users. Commercial users can access the content (for information purposes), but they are just restricted on how they re-use it. Again, I don't see this being a problem for most users. If it is, these users certainly have the ability to ask for extended permission for their specific use. While it is an added step, it seems a fair trade-off in order to give access to content that would otherwise (under traditional copyright provisions) be locked down from view and non-commercial use.

This give and take with regard to the various content licensing provisions seems to satisfy the needs of the vast majority of content producers and users. It appears to me (from my admittedly biased and unscientific "research") that users primarily want access to high quality freely available information. I do not disagree that the trade-offs associated with derivative works, share-alike provisions, and non-commercial use are barriers to unrestricted use. However, as I don't feel that unrestricted use is the goal of the vast majority of users, the Creative Commons provisions seem a fair trade-off. For most users, accepting restrictions in areas that don't usually stand in the way of their use of the material seems a fair trade-off to freely access open content.