creative commons – D’Arcy Norman dot net

ambiguously open

Scott posted a Christmas wish – that people would go to the FlatWorldKnowledge library and download one of the books available under the Creative Commons license before that form of access is revoked at the end of the year.

FlatWorldKnowledge started out by being rather awesome – collecting and publishing a series of supposedly high quality1 books with a few options. If you want an eBook copy or PDF or even print, that’s available for a nominal fee. Or, you can have free access through the FlatWorldKnowledge website for free2.

The books are all labeled as being available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. Awesome! So, students (and others) are able, even encouraged, to download the book for their own use (and re-use).

Except that the books are only available in a format that makes it extremely difficult to actually download more than a single page, or by ponying up $34.95 for a PDF version that includes everything.

Now, I’m all for making money. I wouldn’t mind some, myself. I also get that a company needs to make money, or there’s no point in them doing anything. But, you can’t just slap a license on a page and claim to be open. Open is as much about making it easy as it is about the license. It’s about lowering the costs of use and reuse – and the costs aren’t just about financial transactions.

Under the model adopted by FlatWorldKnowledge, as a student I am able to more easily and quickly photocopy a book for my personal use than I am to save a copy of their open book from the website. That’s messed up. If anything, this serves as a scathing indictment on the viability of an open content business model. Or, for the particular business model originally adopted by FlatWorldKnowledge.

If you’re going to be open, be open. That involves having options for free access, and enabling people to effectively use and reuse the content. If you’re not going to be open, that’s fine. There is no requirement that anyone adopts a particular license or stance on sharing. Own that decision. But don’t straddle the fence trying to reap the PR buzz from being open, while blocking real access to the content and propping up paywalls and technical barriers.

I can’t speak to the actual quality – the books look decent enough on first glance [↩]
you get free access to their “study tools” for 14 days, but I think you get ongoing free access to the book on their website, and can continue to have access to the “study tools” for an additional $19.95 subscription [↩]

CBC News and photo credits?

I was just checking my RSS feeds, and saw an article from CBC News.

I thought to myself, “hey! I’ve seen that photo somewhere. wait a minute… I think I took that photo…”

Some quick poking around on my gallery site 1, and hey presto. Yup. I shot it back in June, 2009, not far from my house.

Looking at the article on CBC’s site, there doesn’t seem to be any mention of that fact.

I’m guessing someone at CBC did a search on Flickr for “lightning in calgary” or something (back when I had a Flickr account), and found the photo. I’d also guess that it’s used whenever there’s a “lightning” story on the site.

I’m actually fine with CBC using the photo. I don’t even care about getting credit for the photo – please go ahead and continue using the photo if it suits your needs.

This whole credit thing is messy. They (likely) found a photo that was shared under a Creative Commons license, and decided to use it. They goofed on the credit (but, so what), but they were trying to do the right thing. If a news organization struggles with providing credit for a photo, how do we expect everyone else (teachers, students, etc…) to be able to do it? And, does it really matter?

holy crap do I need to do a better job with my photo metadata [↩]

2 photographs printed in Alberta Views magazine

I love Creative Commons. Because I tagged my photos with a CC license, a small and local magazine found some of my photographs, and was able to use them in a recent issue. I didn’t make a penny, and it didn’t cost them a penny. But they were able to find good images for what they needed, and I get to say my photos are in a magazine. Win/win.

Open needs to be bidirectional

I just got back from Michael Geist’s inspiring presentation “Why Copyright?” – where he laid out some of the issues relating to copyright, open access, sharing, reusing, mashups, and a long list of implications for the potentially pending Canadian DMCA.

It felt like there was much agreement among the faculty and staff who were present for Dr. Geist’s presentation. When he was talking about the need for, and the power of, open access, many heads were nodding. People were agreeing, and it felt like we might be about ready to start moving forward on some Open Content (if not all the way to Open Education) initiatives. I’ve got some ideas that I want to incubate for a bit longer, but I’ll be following up with faculty members to see what we can do to move in that direction.

Walking back from the presentation, chatting with two unnamed faculty members. They were saying how eye-opening the session was, and how they had no idea that Fair Dealing was as useful and potentially as flexible as it sounds like it is. How great, that they can go ahead and scan books as PDF and post them in their courses in Blackboard.

“But,” I replied, “what if we went further than that, and started sharing course materials on the open web for others to use as well, instead of just locking copyrighted materials behind Blackboard’s login?”

“No. I could never put my course on the open web. I’d get sued. I don’t worry about this now, because it’s all in Blackboard. They have no right to look in Blackboard, so it’s safe.”

My jaw is still sore from when it hit the elevator floor.

Fair Dealing, and open access, and creative commons, and all of the wonderful things that these entail. Only seen by faculty as ways to get content into their courses. A one-way trip. Roach motel.

I can see I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Ron Murch hit the nail on the head with his comment/question in the discussion after the presentation. He asked if there was something more we could be doing, rather than just using citations to show the content that has been reused in the context of a course.

Yes, Ron. There is absolutely more we can do.

First and foremost, we need to model ethical and appropriate use of copyrighted materials. Hiding copyright infringements behind the Blackboard login is not good enough. You have to realize that you’re modeling this infringement for your students to see. “It’s OK to infringe on copyright, because The Man can’t see, right?” “uh… if Dr. Whatsisname could do it, why can’t I?”

I’m not saying you shouldn’t repurpose content in your courses, but do it legitimately. We have a copyright policy here on campus. Use it. Follow it. Show your students what it means to properly use copyrighted materials. Find materials that you can legally use for your purposes. Link to materials that you can’t republish directly in the course.

But, that is only half of what we need to be doing.

The other, perhaps more important part, is that we need to walk the walk. We need to publish content in forms, and under licenses, that make it possible for others to use and reuse it. A professor publishing their research publicly in DSpace is a fantastic way to show their students about the power of sharing. An instructor keeping a public blog and/or wiki with resources is a great way to model active contribution.

This is the primary reason I’ve chosen to publish everything I do online under a simple Creative Commons Attribution license – it’s important to model this, and even more important to fully understand what it means to be an active participant in this collaborative publishing medium. Restricting yourself to publishing within the confines of Blackboard (or any other restricted walled garden) is not contributing to the Greater Good.

We can do better than that. We need to do better than that.