Open content

Definition

• “Open content, coined by analogy with "open source" describes any kind of creative work including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published in a format that explicitly allows the copying of the information” (Wikipedia, retrieved 17:53, 10 July 2006 (MEST))

See also Open educational resources, Wikipedia, Open source

The copyright principle

• Almost everthing written down is coprighted. This includes of course any content you can access on the Internet. Therefore, free access does not mean free to reproduce in any form.

• Copyright concerns all every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression and doesn't allow reproduction or any sort of adaption or transformation for a long time.

Only when terms expire, the work is released to the public domain (e.g. free to used). In most countries this is the case when:

1. The work was created and first published before January 1, 1923, or at least 95 years before January 1 of the current year, whichever is later;
2. The last surviving author of a work died at least 50 years ago. However, there are a few exceptions, e.g.:
   • The author is unkown or if its an audiovisual work, it's 50 years after its first publication.
   • This delay is shortened to 25 years for applied arts and photographic works, if it was not officially released (??).
3. No Berne Convention signatory has passed a perpetual copyright on the work.

Internationally, copyrights are enforced by the The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, and which was first adopted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886. It requires its signatories to protect the copyright on works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way it protects the copyright of its own nationals. The Berne convention states a minimal protection of 50 years after the author's death, but each country is free to extend that. It also allows exceptions, i.e. members shall confine limitations and exceptions to exclusive rights to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.

Authors can of course relax copyright.

The academic exception

In most countries, academics retain copyright ownership for produced papers and publications, unless they gave it way to the publisher of course. In other words, the university usually does not own individual "literary works" (publications and non published texts). Things are often different for patents, trade marks, etc.

Now, some universities recently became interested in selling on-line learning contents. E.g. the the Swiss virtual campus project did encourage authors and institutions in that direction. Since these materials have been produced with extra internal funding, it also follows that the institution might hold the copyright and a big share of the profit. This is clearly a breach from older practice and Daniel K. Schneider considers this to be a harmful trend for the non-commercial public university system. We don't know actually if any courses of this program finally were sold ...

The question of copyright is more tricky in commercial or non-profit self-financing on-line education (typicially the US case). If the university holds the copyright over a production it can make rapid changes to course matrial, can still offer the course after a professor leaves), etc.

The fair use principle

• Any content is at least a little bit open to reproduction. This is an accepted exception to copyright laws and allows authors to quote from other works (within reason)

• In the United States, the fair use doctrine permits some copying and distribution without permission of the copyright holder or payment to same, e.g. for research, critique.

• In some countries, teachers are allowed to distributed photocopies to students (but the institutions pay a flat tax on each copy) which then is redistributed to publishing companies.

• Copies for private use of something that you already own are allowed in most legal systems.

Moral rights

There seems to be a huge difference between US and European intellectual property systems. The moral right ("droit d'auteur") include “the right of identification (right of paternity) and right of the author to the integrity of copyrightable expressions.” (Huckel, 2008).

• In the US a moral belongs to the buyer not the creator
• In the Canada, the UK and the Netherlands the author can give away those rights.
• In most European coutries, non-economic moral rights (e.g. paternity) can not be alienated.

Typology of open content

Open content licenses can be defined according to several criteria and that can be combined of course, e.g.

• Open content, i.e. access to reading: yes/no
• Recipients: profit/no profit
• Redistribution: yes/no
• Modifications (derivative works) allowed: yes/no
• Attribution (original author must be cited): yes/no
• Share alike (redistribution must preserve the original copyright notice): yes/no

E.g. "Creative Commons" (todays most popular open contents licence) allows and author to define 11 combinations of "attribution", "noncommercial", "no derivative works" and "share alike".

The creative commons license

• Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright - all rights reserved - and the public domain - no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work - a "some rights reserved" copyright (Learn More about Creative Commons, retrieved 17:53, 10 July 2006 (MEST)).

• The Creative Commons website enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

According to the creative commons website (17:53, 10 July 2006 (MEST)), there are 11 majors versions of the creative commons license based on four conditions:

1. Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give credit the way you request.
2. Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only
3. No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
4. Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work

(see Creative Commons home page or Wikipedia: Creative Commons for more details).

GNU Free Documentation License

The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. It is the counterpart to the GNU GPL that gives readers the same rights to copy, redistribute and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies can also be sold commercially, but if produced in larger quantities (greater than 100) then the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 17:53, 10 July 2006 (MEST))

Open Publication License

This licence has been created for the academic Open Content Project and has been reused in several other projects including artistic ones. Its creators now suggest to use a variant of "creative commons".

Examples

• Content of this Wiki uses the Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike version. This means that you can use its contents for non-commercial activities, that you can make derivative works (but only if you cite us) and that there is a copy-left (you must preserve the copyright notice on derivative works).

• Many learning objects repositories offer their content through some form of open content license.

• Open educational resources (OER) movement

• Open content is not necessarily restricted to text, graphics or software, e.g. see the very intriguing and funny Free Beer project.

Links

• Wikipedia - Open Content

• Wikipedia - Creative Commons

• Wikipedia - Copyright

• Wikipedia - Fair Use

• Wikipedia - GNU Free Documentation License

• Wikipedia entry - Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

• Wikipedia - Public domain

• Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

References

• Huckell, T. (2008). The Academic Exception as Foundation for Innovation in Online Learning. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2008 (pp. 6384-6393). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

• Lessig Lawrence (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004. Website and PDF - HTML at Ebooks.