eds.activemath.org

Looking for a good licensing model for content which stimulates re-usability? Here’s an attempt…

In report of our experience with authors, I dare say that most authors are somewhat opened to open-license their content, in the great spirit of a free distribution and re-use. The Creative Commons Family of Licenses is well known, well established in many countries, and is certainly the best thing we can suggest.

Which creative-commons for re-use ? In my experience, at least, it was hard to convince authors that any derivatives could also be allowed, i.e. that redistribution in modified form should be allowed (even if with same license). The reason? Probably a fear to loose control…

But derivation is required! That can be observed very often: an educator wishes to adapt things to his or her objectives, contexts, students… many others say so.

One way to fill the gap could be to try to answer this fear of loosing control. Digital Rights Management is a way, but a way that scares many and is simpy doomed with technical annoyances that discourages most (and made the low success of e-books).

Another way to fight the losse of control is to request visibility: authors do not want to prevent re-users, they wish to:

• know about the re-uses (e.g. statistics, contacts…), at least for personal fame
• they might want to know if, maybe, the license was breached
• but also if a re-use is… nice… or… suitable for a collaboration!

Technically, that could be solved by requiring a transparent web-visibility with back-links. I.e. the exposure of the collection of content that is re-used, or a page about it, with a link to the original collection using a standard format.

Web-crawlers of all sorts, including search engines, could then be used to see what-links-there and an author could, then, start to see the growing success of his collection.

Is this legally feasible in Creative Commons ? Not sure, but it would be worth it!