Ethics and Open Content

Open content, public domain, copyleft, "no rights reserved", and a cornucopia of other terms have popped up all over this week's reading more prolifically than the proverbial mushrooms after a rainstorm. While at least to me it was a lot of information to internalize, essentially the subject at hand for this week's post is nothing short of a revolution in thinking about what has outlived its usefulness in terms of access to information. Here I am talking about copyright in relation to access to information and how traditional copyright has failed to meet the demands of today's learning society.  Journey with me as I attempt to unravel all of the wonderful possibilities.

Open content according to Johnson, Adams, and Haywood (2011) has allowed the dissemination and perusal of information to move away from the traditional modality of centralized and authoritative repositories that were essentially static into decentralized shareable resources that are both free and ubiquitous. Open content allows users to customize a work for use in the curriculum (Johnson, Adams, and Haywood) and allow the modification to be shared with other educators. Here then is where I would argue that the revolutionary concept comes into play in that educators can now customize according to the specific needs of each individual classroom, striking a balance between the authoritative voice of the original author while at the same time adding their own voice. From a bottom line perspective schools and students also benefit financially in that these open content textbooks are shareable as already stated,but students may also download these textbooks for free or at very reduced cost.

Central however to this issue of the ability to share and modify are concerns about retention of intellectual property rights, copyright as it pertains to the creator's right to distribute the work as well as the ability for the end user - and in this context I am of course speaking of students and educators - to use content and modify it without worrying about possible legal hassles. A number of solutions have presented themselves to remedy this situation.

Creative Commons states that copyright laws were created before the advent of the Internet and that the copying and pasting we now take for granted once required the explicit permission of the original creator. Creative Commons is an effort to create an environment which allows for different types of licenses that allow copyright holders to retain their intellectual property while simultaneously allowing for different levels of use of their works. Creative Commons allows for different levels of licensing from completely free use of intellectually all the way to limited non-commercial use. Johnson, Adams, and Haywood (2011) do state that the open content is diffuse and driven more my personal taste at the time of their report than by collaborative efforts among many. Implicit in this statement is the notion that open content is still a burgeoning effort. In the article they state that the full realization of the fruition of collaborative effort with regard to open content will take a number of years.

All of this seems quite utopian and certainly one that can be realized but the road has not been without a few legal potholes and corporate positioning. Open Content Alliance relates a number of issues surrounding Google Books and its attempt to monopolize the area of public domain books and other materials also known as "orphans." Google claimed to be a guardian of these orphans and along with Microsoft creative an initiative to scan millions of orphan books from hundreds of libraries. Open Content Alliance however points out that the restrictions placed upon the use of these orphans were such that libraries and educational institutions that once hailed the effort as being a savior to the academic community in fact placed Google in a position to dictate who could use what material under their terms - essentially breaking the law by using existing laws. Further complicating the situation was the fact that five years prior to the `google initiative, the Million Books Project had already begun the process of scanning these orphans without any restrictions whatsoever. Google's financial muscle it would seem had the opposite effect of what the project intended in that Google positioned itself as intellectual property owner of books that it legally did not own. A settlement was reached but it positions Google Books as a commercial distributor of out of print books without any serious competition.

However, Google's financial muscle popularity has not proven to be insurmountable and that is a very good thing for learning communities and casual readers as well. In the area of textbooks Flat World Knowledge is built upon the premise that authors contribute to the learning community by creating textbooks that can be modified as previously discussed to suit the needs of individual learning environments. Authors get rapid royalty return, students get choice, and faculty can modify (Flat World Knowledge).

Thanks to open content, the stranglehold of copyright is loosening to the obvious benefit of learning communities. Open content allows revision and modification of textbooks while the original author still retains intellectual property rights, in other words, licenses exist whereby the original creator must be credited and the same distribution conditions apply fir the revision and for and shared revisions thereafter.

Open content is frequently digital material (Johnson, Adams, and Haywood 2011) and as such allows the inclusion of video, audio, and images that enhance textuality. As such, there are online repositories of images, videos, and other media that may be used freely and in many cases these materials may be altered as well.

With the continued efforts by Flat World, Open Content Alliance, and even Google Books, it would appear that as the kinks are worked out we may finally be in a situation where everyone involved in the learning community truly does benefit creatively, collaboratively, and financially.

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Addendum: Google Books IS a blast! Along with all of the classics such as Chaucer, Austen, Poe, and well, you name the classic author and chances are her/his works can be found there, you can also find cool stuff like Baseball Digest (I am a HUGE baseball fan), The Weekly World News - yes, now we can read that tabloid with no guilt and also not contribute to the death of trees, Calvin and Hobbes comics and scads of other great stuff. Actually I had never explored Google Books for quite a while and I was pleasantly surprised to see the fun stuff there too. Now, if you will pardon me, I am off to read the story about Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush being space alien skeleton brothers to Ted Nugent! I LOVE life!!