This document discusses open educational resources (OER) and Creative Commons (CC) licensing. It explains that OER allow for access, sharing, adaptation, and derivation, and the more permissions granted, the more open the resource. CC licenses work with copyright to grant certain permissions for uses of a work without requiring permission. The CC BY license is recommended as it allows the most freedoms while still requiring attribution, and is compatible with all other CC licenses. Different CC licenses are suited for different purposes depending on whether derivatives or commercial use is allowed.

1. OER and CC Licensing
Lila Bailey
Counsel, ccLearn
April 23, 2009
This presentation is licensed:

2. What makes educational resources OPEN?
The ability to:
• Access
• Share — Copy, Distribute, Display
• Adapt — Perform, Translate
• Derive — Remix
The openness of a resource increases with the
permissions given.
More permissions = More
open.

3. OER form a Network.
• Teachers like to share and adapt materials for
the classroom.
• Students consume these materials, but they only
learn by actively taking part in the process of
creation.
• We learn by doing what has been done before; we
create by re-creating, by building off others’ work.
Learning occurs through exchange of and
collaboration on the expression of ideas.

4. T
But there are Legal Barriers.
Nancy cbn
http://flickr.com/photos/pugno_muliebriter/1384247192/

5. Expression is often restricted.
By default, expression is copyrighted at the
moment of creation.
Copyrighted material cannot be shared, adapted,
derived, and in some circumstances, even accessed
without express permission from copyright owner.
When people, especially educators, put materials
on the web, it is usually with the purpose of
making it freely available.
Unfortunately, copyright overrules this intent.
And if you don’t license your work to be open, it
automatically defaults to all rights reserved copyright.

6. Creative Commons Licenses.
• CC Licenses work with copyright. They do not
replace copyright, but instead grant the public
permissions for certain uses that would otherwise
be disallowed by law.
• The author still retains her ownership of a work; she
simply chooses which freedoms she wishes her
work to carry automatically, without requiring
permission.
• This makes perfect sense in education especially,
since most people want to share and build off of
each other’s work.

7. openDemocracy cba
http://flickr.com/photos/opendemocracy/542303769/
CC offers an easy way for people to share
materials, without having to ask permission or
rely on narrow educational exceptions or
fuzzy legal doctrines like fair use.

8. CC Licenses Support Interoperability
pd
ccLearn wants education
to be here:
“All rights
reserved”
Public
Domain
Attribution
Only
CC BY
are clear, comprehensible
and compatible

9. Because CC BY ...
• Allows the most freedoms without giving up
attribution, which is important for credibility in
education
• Is compatible with every other CC license, allowing
the most room for innovation via collaboration
• Does not encroach on the freedom of potential
users by enforcing a specified use:
e.g., CC BY-SA requires you to share alike, even if
the new work is best suited for another license.

10. CC License Case Studies
Which License should I use when?

11. CC BY-ND
Attribution
No Derivatives
Allows for
redistribution,
commercial and non-
commercial, as long
as it is passed along
unchanged and in
whole, with credit to
you.
Imagine:
• You are part of a group of experts that has
finally finished a protocol for data curation.
• Every word was carefully considered, and
it took months of meetings to complete.
• You and the group want to share it, and
you don’t particularly care how it is used...
... AS LONG AS it does not get altered in any way.
For this purpose, you may feel that CC BY-
ND is appropriate.

12. CC BY-ND
Attribution
No Derivatives
Allows for
redistribution,
commercial and non-
commercial, as long
as it is passed along
unchanged and in
whole, with credit to
you.
But consider:
• Foreign colleagues want to translate the
protocol. They must seek permission before
they can do so.
?
• Any time someone would like to adapt your
work, the group’s permission is required—
Even for the simple purposes of technical
and social interoperability.
• A fellow expert wants to adapt the work for
display on PDAs. He must also seek
permission.
?

13. CC BY-NC-
SA
Attribution
Non-commercial
Share Alike
Lets others:
• remix, tweak, and
build upon your work
non-commercially.
• download and
redistribute your work.
• translate, remix, and
produce new stories
based on your work.
All new work based
on yours will carry
the same license, so
any derivatives will
also be licensed non-
commercial.
Consider
• A university decides to release course
content openly.
Hurray!
• However, much of the content is third-party
material.
• It is difficult to get rights-holders to give
them content without the NC term.
This is a case where the university may
want to adopt CC BY-NC-SA,
since it is necessary to reach an
agreement with all their rights-holders.

14. But what if
• Rights holders are willing to give materials
to the university without the NC restriction.
Hurray!
• So the university applies the NC term.
This is a bad reason to use NC because:
• However, the university doesn’t want anyone
selling content without their permission.
Boo!
• People only buy content if they can’t
access the free version, or if they want to
access it differently.
i.e. A publishing co. decides to make
hardcopies available at minimal prices
(to recover printing costs) … to students in Bangladesh!
CC BY-NC-
SA
But they can’t,
because it is
NC licensed.
And they don’t want
to go through the
red tape of
negotiations.

15. CC BY
Attribution Only
Lets others distribute,
remix, tweak, and
build upon your work,
even commercially,
as long as they credit
you for the original
creation.
Consider
• You are a creator of a work, be it a
• But as a professional in your field, you
want to be recognized for your work.
• Basically, you want your stuff to be used
widely—by the most people possible.
This is a great case for CC BY.
play,
a love song, a cookbook,
or an educational video game.

16. CC BY
Attribution Only
Lets others distribute,
remix, tweak, and
build upon your work,
even commercially,
as long as they credit
you for the original
creation.
But what if
• Someone takes my stuff and locks it away,
defeating the purpose of making it open?
• Someone uses my stuff inappropriately,
while my name is attached to it?
That’s impossible with digital content. Even if
someone remixed the work and re-licensed it
under full copyright, your original work is still
available, free for anybody to use.
• CC BY specifically states that you do not
endorse any works derived from yours.
• So it’s OK. The non-endorsement
clause (and moral rights) allows you to
request a take-down and seek damages
anyway.

17. Remember: CC BY
• Allows the most freedoms with attribution
(important for credibility in education)
• Is compatible with every other CC license, so...
• All the while NOT encroaching on the freedom of
potential users by enforcing a specified use
e.g., CC BY-NC-SA might not allow print versions of your work
to be given away for even a small recovery cost.
New and creative uses can develop that were
not possible before!