Re: [OER-advocacy] Great #OER logo -- Request to UNESCO to remove the No-derivatives restriction

[Cable Green]

Thank you Wayne for the heads up. I had not seen the new UNESCO OER logo.

It's a very nice logo, but I agree - it is critical to remove ND from the logo that is supposed to globally signify OER. 

OER are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. 

ND (no derivatives) simply does not work for OER.

Users must have free (no-cost) access to the OER and free (as in “freedom”) permission to engage in the “4R” activities when using OER, including:

• Revise: adapt and improve the OER so it better meets your needs
• Reuse: use the original or your new version of the OER in a wide range of contexts
• Remix: combine or “mashup” the OER with other OER to produce new materials
• Redistribute: make copies and share the original OER or your new version with others

The ND license condition does not allow: revise or remix.

UNESCO – please change the license from CC BY ND… to either CC BY … or CC BY SA… so we can all use it.

Warmest regards,

Cable

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning

Creative Commons

===============

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Wayne Mackintosh <mackinto...@gmail.com> wrote:

The UNESCO World Open Educational Resources Congress promises to be a landmark event contributing to the mainstream adoption of open education practices worldwide.

UNESCO working with Jonathas Mello (the copyright holder)  has produced a logo for the World OER Congress.  

The logo carries a No-Derivatives restriction.  In effect, this means that the majority of our open education projects in the world will not legally be able to use the logo in the absence of custom license permission from the copyright holder. This seems to be an unnecessary transaction cost for a visual identity "for the global Open educational resources community of practitioners, projects and researchers". 

On behalf of many of the free culture projects in the world -- I request UNESCO's assistance in negotiating removal of the ND restriction with the copyright holder. It would be far better to use a free cultural works approved license (CC-BY, CC-BY-SA or even a public domain declaration.)  In this way we will be able to use logo. As it stands, for example, we can't include a copy of the logo on the WikiEducator website :-(.

UNESCO - -can you help us?

With kind regards

Wayne

 

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Director OER Foundation
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Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
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[Cable Green]

To be clear, the license only applies to the logo... not to any creative works on which the logo resides.

 

I think the license on the logo – intended to be the global logo for OER - is important because it sets the tone.

If the OER logo is licensed with ND, I think we're collectively sending a bad signal to new (and existing) open community members.  A new open community member might look at the OER logo and think "they used BY ND - maybe I should use that same license on my open textbook, my open course, etc.”

If the open community wants the most permissive licenses used on OER, so downstream users can revise and remix open educational resources, the OER logo should lead by example. Again, it sets the tone.

I recommend the OER logo be licensed with CC BY, CC BY SA or put it in the public domain with CCO.

 

Respectfully submitted for discussion,

Cable

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Cable,

I agree with your point about the importance and significance to set an example and tone for a logo which aims to communicates the values and principles of the OER movement .

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Cable Green <ca...@creativecommons.org> wrote:

To be clear, the license only applies to the logo... not to any creative works on which the logo resides.

 

The dilemma with the ND license is what legally constitutes a derivative work and the original intent of the copyright holder.  Speaking, personally, I would not risk the inclusion of an ND artifact in a derivative work which is intended for re-purposing the logo is unlikely to be used in our projects. 

The copyright holder might be happy with the inclusion of the logo within a derivative work which is released under a license which does not carry an ND restriction, for example an open textbook. (Legally the CC-BY-ND license is not compatible with the release of a derivative work under, for example a CC-BY license -- but what constitutes a derivative is another question.) 

In another example, consider an  image collage where the logo is used as a dominant element in a slide for a presentation but released under a free cultural works approved license. In this scenario, the resultant work may be considered a derivative work of the original image. The problem with the ND is that reuse of the logo falls within a grey area of uncertainty.

The distribution of the logo will also be restricted because sites which require free cultural works licensing will have difficulty in hosting the image.  

Hardly a message of sharing freely.

Wayne