OpenEd Wk 6 *** Copyright and Public Domain

I am still wrapping my head around all the details of copyright, but at a cursory glance, it seems like the value of public domain is not fully realized through the Creative Commons license, although the CC license is better than the proprietary copyright system which currently dominates and controls information globally.

If OERs were simply placed the public domain, I think this would be the baseline for OER to make the greatest benefit. I think there are already enough barriers to entry for actually accessing OER for the billions in developing countries who would like to and could actually benefit from OER (technology, language differences, politics, geography).

For this reason, I think that attaching copyrights - in any form - to valuable content will probably kick up the notches of complication which will prevent potential creators and would-be sharers of content from contributing to the growing body of OER (which is still lacking in contribution from grassroots groups doing participatory, tailored ed programs).

At the same time, I am kind of torn on this issue. I recognize that some of the would-be contributors are also hesitant to kill off their copyrights cold-turkey in order to contribute all their goods to the public domain. I faced the challenge to explain copyright and OER when I met with the directors of two international organizations committed to supporting grassroots education, literacy and basic education in developing countries.

Although the leaders of these organizations were interested in the concept of OER, they were reluctant to engage full-board in sharing resources for the OER movement (largely, because they said they had to get approval from their respective Boards of Trustees). These two organizations are run by ethical folks who I have seen are highly committed to supporting the grassroots education movement: World Education, Incorporated (founded in the 1940s to do literacy work in developing countries, and creating, publishing, and sharing great educational tools ever since then) and ProLiteracy Worldwide (the largest and oldest literacy organization in the USA also creating, publishing, and selling literacy services for 50 years ++).

In the end, we (COSL) got conditional approval from both organizations to create pilot projects with their tools (e.g. not removing copyrights, but not launching these tools directly into the public domain either) and, specifically, we could only utilize these tools in Nepal until they gave further approval (we have started on these pilot projects, but we are still limited in funding).

Since it was so difficult to communicate with these leaders who are committed to supporting education in developing countries, I wonder what kinds of sensitization are necessary to bring more people (perhaps less-committed to helping developing countries, but endowed with resources which could benefit those stakeholders) on board for this movement (e.g. Board Members of critical organizations, other potential authors, publishing companies etc.)?

While I laud the altruism that is rife in this OER community, I wonder how many people will resist the movement and fail to laud the success of OER when they perceive that it negatively impacts their own job security?

Perhaps we need to create a tool kit to go with these "sensitization campaigns" in order to help identify why a growing public domain is in everybody's best interest and why it does jeopardize a certain kind of job security, it could also unlock many other kinds of economic possibilities.