Open content licensing - Richard McCracken
Open content licensing
Richard McCracken, Director, ecch, an organization promoting the case method of learning with the largest collection of management case studies and journal article reprints
The online distribution of content via the internet and other digital networks brings many individual users into direct contact with copyright regulation and practice for the first time and many, particularly academics, accessing or sharing research work or seeking teaching materials, find the traditional copyright
licensing and clearing models time consuming and frustrating. Out of that frustration has grown the concept of ‘open content’ – using a range of licensing models that make it easy to share and access digital content without negotiating sophisticated copyright management and licensing.
The terms ‘open source’ and ‘open content’ are used almost interchangeably but ‘open source’ is generally taken to apply to the release and exchange of open software, while ‘open content’ refers to other forms of media content. Under open content licences text, moving images and sound, or a mix of them,
are made available easily and simply for copying and reuse.
A number of standard open licences are available of which the most common are the Creative Commons, AEShareNet and GNU licences. Each licence may vary in its drafting and may be more suitable for some forms of content than others. There are a number of common characteristics:
- Users may copy, distribute, display, make available digitally, and make facsimile copies of the work in any format.
- The licences are global and are not territorial.
- Digital rights management systems (DRMs) cannot be used to restrict access to the work.
- The copyright notice must be retained in or attached to the work.
- Authors must be attributed.
Perhaps the most commonly used open content licensing system is the Creative Commons (CC). Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, is widely credited as one of the chief proponents of the Creative Commons, an organization or movement intended to promote the wide uptake of open content around the world. Work released under CC licences is intended to be used and reworked easily and quickly without the delays associated with copyright clearance. Instead of individual negotiation, the CC licences are standardized and linked to each piece of content so that users may easily see and recognize the licensing terms. There are a number of CC licences, each sharing the common characteristics outlined above but with some variation between each. These variations allow CC licensors to add further information about how their work may be used according to their response to very simple questions:
- Is commercial use permitted or not?
- Are derivative works permitted or must the work remain in its original form?
If derivative works are allowed, then the derivative work must itself be released under the same licence as the original work. This is called share-alike.
The Creative Commons website lists instances of work released under CC licences by both individuals and organizations. Some major media institutions have chosen to release some content under CC or similar licences. The BBC and Channel 4, for example, have used an amended version of the CC model to release archive material in their Creative Archive, the Flickr photo-sharing site uses a CC licence, and The Open University uses a CC licence to release educational materials through its OpenLearn site.
It is easy to imagine why an individual or a public-sector institution may choose to release content openly. The open ideology may coincide with government policies on accessing public information, for example, or with the collaborative nature of some educational research. The difficulty for commercial publishers is in assessing the extent to which open digital content models present a threat or an opportunity. Some analysts argue that commercial markets may be built on the back of open release. Making some content available openly may generate publicity or marketing benefits, enhance brand reputation or lead to the commercialization of added benefit services such as advisory services or enhanced, paid-for content.
Blood, Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds (the cover is shown above) was published by The Friday Project in 2006 under a Creative Commons licence. Under the terms of this licence users can make copies of all or part of this work for their own personal use and for other non-commercial use. They can also republish online with the correct acknowledgement.
