/Schonwetter_presentation01062011 by UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education

Creative Commons An Overview

Dr Tobias Schonwetter Legal Lead CC SA Joint Workshop on Open Educational Resources and Intellectual Property Rights 1 June 2011 Moscow, Russia part of the Creative Commons international initiative

My starting point:  We kind of know by now what OERs are;  We agree that it’s worth having them;  Now, what needs to be done?

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(1) You need authors (the human element)

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(2) You need dissemination platforms (the ICT element)

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(2) You need open licences (the legal element)

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Why?

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Well, lets have a look at one of the definitions of OERsâ&#x20AC;Ś

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Open

Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been

released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use by others. â&#x20AC;?

The public domain Public domain works are those works whose use is not restricted by copyright â&#x20AC;˘Copyright term expired â&#x20AC;˘Works that are not copyright protected (eg official texts of a legislative, administrative or legal nature)

Most OER materials are NOT in the public domain!

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So in order to qualify as an OER, material must be released under â&#x20AC;&#x153;an intellectual property license that permits their free use by othersâ&#x20AC;?.

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But that still doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t explain why we need open licences

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In order to understand this, we need to briefly talk about copyright law!

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What is copyright?

Patents Trademarks Designs

one pillar of the IP protection regime; others:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Copyright is the exclusive right in relation to work embodying intellectual content to

do or to authorise others to do certain acts in relation to that work.â&#x20AC;?

Exclusive rights (“certain acts”) include rights to  make reproductions  make adaptations  broadcast

 distribute  perform  display in public

Basic requirements for copyright protection

 Originality  Material form  Qualified person

no registration necessary the idea itself is NOT protected

Duration of copyright protection

ď&#x192;źdepending on the nature of work ď&#x192;źminimum of 50 years after the death of the author for literary works (Berne Convention)

Permission is required for most uses of most works!

Unless a

Examples

Fair dealing / fair use (study, research, private use) Exceptions for

educational purposes (class-room)

Exceptions for

libraries and archives

Quotations Etc.

But many of these potentially access-enabling © e&l:

 only allow copying of small parts of works, 

are often too vaguely crafted to be reliable access mechanisms (especially if there is a lack of domestic case law) – “rather be safe than sorry attitude”, and



they differ from one country to another.

copyright often restricts access to learning materials and access in developing countries can often only be achieved by way of copyright infringement!

OERs are a legal alternative! But for OERs to be OPEN, we need to get rid of at least some of the copyright restrictions.

and this can only be done throughâ&#x20AC;Ś.

(MORE) OPEN LICENCES

Creative Commons is not Anti-copyright - rights management tool based on copyright The public domain – giving certain permissions in advance Anti-commercial – can charge for, e.g., commercial uses, “premium” service, or embed advertising Part of the relationship between rights holder and user Perfect or even the best solution for every situation and all creators Great for computer programs

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Creative Commons is

A not-for-profit organisation of (mainly) volunteers

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Creative Commons is

a set of pre-formulated licences that allow more uses than the law usually does

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Creative Commons is

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Creative Commons is

Used worldwide – 50+ national (“ported”) CC licences

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Creative Commons is

Successful â&#x20AC;&#x201C; approx. 185,000,000 licensed works by 2010

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Examples?

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Now, how does it actually work?

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Go to www.creativecommons.org

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Click!

Attribution

Attribution-Noncommercial

Attribution-NoDerivatives

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Attribution-ShareAlike

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives

ck! i l C

So what is THE BEST CC licence for OERs?

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It appears that there are 2 preferred licences (and an ongoing dispute amongst scholars as to which one should be used):

CC BY CC BY SA

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CC Learn: â&#x20AC;&#x153;the terms of different licences are often incompatible with one another in a way that prevents combining materials from different providers.â&#x20AC;? [hence, CC BY should be used]

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C Lowe (â&#x20AC;&#x153;Considerations for CC licensing of Open Educational Resources: The Value of Copyleftâ&#x20AC;? [2010])

favours CC BY SA licences

To avoid appropriation and to build a sustainable education commons

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In my view the answer only can be

it depends – there is no clear-cut answer! … driven by long-term or shorter term goals? … what kind of OER material are we dealing with? … etc

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Lastly: Why should we continue talking about copyright issues at UNESCO – isn’t, for instance, WIPO better suited? Because UNESCO looks at the issue from a different angle (cultural/ educational considerations v economic reasoning) … and now I am very much interested to hear about the legal problems some of my colleagues face when “porting” Creative Commons licences into their laws SOUTH AFRICA part of the Creative Commons international initiative

Thank you! my email address is: tobiasschonwetter@gmail.com

[“Access to Knowledge in Africa: The role of Copyright” [2010] www.aca2k.org “Introducing Copyright” [Hofman, COL [2009]] www.col.org/copyright ]

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Creative Commons Licence

This presentation is the work of Dr Tobias Schonwetter. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 South Africa License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/za/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.