University Business - April 2006 - (Page 64)

ALL RIGHTS PRESERVED certainly knows Larry Lessig, says Carson, so I wouldn't be surprised NCOURAGING COLLABORATION E if there were some discussions between the two men as the project Conventional copyright laws can often be overly re- was developing. Abelson now sits on the CC board of directors. strictive, especially when the creator's intent is to share Interestingly, the Creative Commons model was almost exactly his or her work openly. That's where the organization what we were following at the start, says Carson. We eventually Creative Commons enters the picture. Founded in realized that they were doing the same thing we were doing, so in 2001 by Stanford University law professor Lawrence the last year we went though a process of convergence to make sure Lessig, CC is a nonprofit devoted to expanding the range of creative that our license lined up exactly with their license so we are now work available for others legally to build upon and share. The CC officially adopters of the Creative Common license although we've website enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the had a similar license for years. We both came up with the same three public, while retaining others through a variety of licensing and con- principles: attribution, noncommercial use, and share-alike. tract schemes, including dedication to the public domain or open Carson explains the principles this way: We are allowed to pub- content licensing terms. Its intent is to avoid the problems current lish the materials, and our users can use those materials, as long as copyright laws create for the sharing of information. the use of those materials is non-commercial. The people using the Too often the debate over creative control tends to the ex- materials may make derivatives out of them, but, if they do so, their tremes, reads the introduction to the site. At one pole is a vision of derivative materials have to be made available under the same li- total control a world in which every last use of a work is regulated cense. Finally, all the work must be attributed both to MIT and to and in which `all rights reserved' and then some is the norm. At the the faculty members who created the materials. other end is a vision of anarchy a world in which creators enjoy a OCW content creators own the materials posted on the web wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Bal- and retain rights to them. I think that is one of the brilliant things ance, compromise, and moderation once the driving forces of a about OCW, says Carson. There is discussion on many campuses copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally about who owns what when it comes to teaching materials, but the have become endangered species. Creative Commons model resolves those questions. Faculty main- Creative Commons licenses are available for websites, scholarship, tain ownership of all of their materials, and they grant us a license to music, film, photography, literature, courseware, and other content. publish those materials under very specific conditions. So far, more than 4.5 million works have been licensed through Cre- One of those conditions, he explains, is that the spirit of open ative Commons. Higher education has also begun to see the value of sharing is maintained, and reusing the material for commercial pur- the Creative Commons model. For example, Rice University Texas poses violates the license. If someone wants to use the materials, they makes course materials available for distribution and reuse under the are ethically and legally obligated by the license to make their ma- CC license through the university's Connexions Repository. terials available for free. From that perspective, the Creative Com- Likewise, the Berklee College of Music Mass. offers free, down- mons license discourages stealing the information for purposes of loadable music lessons from the Berklee Shares website. repackaging it for profit. Perhaps one of the greatest experiments in protecting owners' Although abuses are infrequent, Carson says, MIT will step in rights in an open environment is the OpenCourseWare project at to halt improper use. We've had a few instances of commercial uses the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Launched in 2001, the that we weren't comfortable with, Carson notes, and usually a let- OCW project's goal is to publish and make freely available on the ter from the MIT legal office is sufficient to put an end to it. More internet course materials from some 2,000 courses. Just five years often, people come to us and ask whether what they intend is a use later the project already lists 1,250 courses, says Steve Carson, senior we're comfortable with or not, and we'll say yes or no, and try to strategist for OCW at MIT. explain as clearly as possible why. OCW was in the planning stages at about the same time Creative Besides the idea that such a practice keeps the information free, Commons was forming, and the two projects share a similar goal. It it also encourages collaboration, something that a traditional copy- may even be that the concurrently developed projects influenced one right can't. We hope that a technical solution will emerge for people another. Hal Abelson, one of the MIT faculty who created OCW, There is discussion on many campuses about who owns what when it comes to teaching materials, but the Creative Commons model resolves those questions. Steve Carson, MIT 64 | April 2006 universitybusiness.com 46 ddni.MRD MP 73:61:21 60/42/3 http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - April 2006

Table of Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
People Watch
Sense of Place
On the Hill
Viewpoint
Future Shock
Financial Aid
Admissions
COVER STORY: Averting Housing Havoc
The Art of Reputation Building
Web Conferencing: Rich Media on the Desktop
All Rights Preserved
Admissions Messages vs. Admissions Realities
Internet Technology
What's New
Calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business - April 2006