0.5 Oer licensing and conditions of use

The module“ Submitting Materials to OER Commons ”showed how to submit content items or links to items about the field of open education to OER Commons. This module,“OER Licensing and Conditions of Use,”will explain what authors need to know about licensing and conditions of use. It will also cover the licensing options in OER Commons.

What oer authors need to know about licensing

This module is intended to offer a general overview of the basics of licensing OER materials to assist you in using others’materials as well as sharing your own. It will not cover the legalities of every aspect of intellectual property. Specifically, this module will cover the licensing options available in OER Commons as well as the conditions of use. The objective is to provide a basic understanding of licensing to help you make an informed choice as you both use and submit content to OER Commons. Here are a few scenarios to illustrate the types of material licensing issues an educator may face:

• You have created a set of Algebra materials and exercises and want to offer them for others to use, but want to make sure you receive attribution for your work.
• You have written a story of a boy who travels to Central America with his family for your geography students, and are willing to share it with other teachers, but don’t necessarily want your name attached to it.
• You have downloaded a useful exercise for your Wednesday afternoon science lab from an OER site, but aren’t sure if you can legally change it to meet your local needs.
• You found a photograph of lemurs online, but you aren’t certain if you have permission to insert it into your PowerPoint presentation on Madagascar that you are preparing.

The philosophy of OER is based on the idea of sharing and re-using content. Because the restrictions of traditional copyright laws are not appropriate for new media and the culture that has grown around it, legal experts in the field of new media have pioneered alternative legal frameworks for sharing, reusing, and remixing content. Creative Commons has been in the forefront of this movement; their goal is“to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules.”

For an overview of the limitations of the traditional copyright system, and how Creative Commons addresses these limitations, watch this short video called“ Get Creative .”

When you submit materials to OER Commons to share with others, you be asked to choose a license for your work. During the materials submission process, you will be presented with three licensing options to choose from:

• Creative Commons
• GNU Free Document
• Custom/Other

This module will provide a description of each licensing option; however, because OER Commons recommends the use of Creative Commons licensing, this module will primarily focus on Creative Commons.

What is creative commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that provides a free alternative to the restrictions of the traditional copyright laws. Offering several licensing options, authors have the flexibility to decide how they want others to use their materials. Watch this short video,“ Wanna Work Together? ,”for an overview of why you would want to use Creative Commons licensing.