From: Wayne Mackintosh [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, 21 March 2011 11:36 AM
Hiya Wayne, Thanks again for your patience. Just a couple of things to clarify our thoughts. In line. >Well, national copyright laws determine the default ownership of Copyright (mostly under the paramaters of the Berne Convention.) . It most instances, creative works produced under >employment belong to the employer (unless there are contractual exceptions.) >I would argue that OER and corresponding copyright is the responsibility of universities, colleges and polytechnics. As owners of the copyright of the teaching materials produced through >employment, they have the authority to change IP policies in support of OER. Its highly unlikely that governments will intervene with the autonomy of universities. Well, any government agency, like a university, must abide by the laws of their country, and the pressure is building. Just reading through the Australian gov's statement of IP principles. The Statement of IP Principles does not formally extend to bodies covered by the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997. (With the emphasis on FORMAL). http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/Copyright_CommonwealthCopyrightAdm inistration_StatementofIPPrinciplesforAustralianGovernmentAgencies >Yes, in government (in fact, ALL institutional) circles, policy does tend to follow practice. However there are leading examples from progressive governments who are moving forward in opening up copyright - -see for example NZGOAL: http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/nzgoal And about 30 others. All we're talking about is how these may be applied so the evolution accelerates. http://egovau.blogspot.com/2010/10/australian-government-sets-default.html In practical terms, policy won't change the habits of (E.g.) Institutional librarians to pay hundreds of millions of dollars per year to buy back the aggregations of their (research) authors from third party publishers. Nor does it stop Institutional librarians taking money from their National governments, at different times, to try and aggregate "their" author's materials on the same basis as "the third party" publishers. Most countries can boast this kind of stillborn attempt at progress = http://www.arrow.edu.au/ They die because the projects are National. >There is already, in my view, a critical mass of openly licensed materials to make a start. The OERu will be targeting qualifications based solely on OER. Institutions will have a choice - ->spending millions of dollars protecting closed resources, or reinvesting a small percentage in OER to improve the sustainability of education. I agree. 'Targeting qualification based solely on OER" does seem like the hard way round though. Agreed. Qualifications based "solely" on OER is THE ideal. But I think we'll have a decade (at least) of "shades of grey" before we get there. While this drive is going on, librarians, as the curators of the learning materials, are trying to figure out how "their" Institutional repositories/databases can be shared amongst global disciplinary (OE) groups. i.e. How do they cut the third party aggregators (costs) out of the loop. The "critical mass" you talk about is already there, scattered around in Institutional and National silos. Whether it's licensed or not doesn't matter (does it?). So long as it's free (as in cost) and easy to access. I think you'd get a surprise, and enlist an ally, if you were to ask Otago's librarians how much they spend on journals and research materials (which are OERs). And if you ask about "Open Access Journals" you'd see how serious librarians are, globally, about helping the OER Foundation achieve its aims. In "the learning part of the equation", the problem unis have is they are Nationally-centric/funded institutions in a Globalizing world. We also know the progressives within them, like P2P, OCWC, WE, etc, are pushing their National envelopes into the Global space and searching for a sustainable business model. So surely, if "professional educators" are attempting to "add value" in this global space, we could encourage more progress by helping our old National institutions learn how to solve their (own) aggregation/dissemination problem. (As Jan Bakker suggests). >Universities have been working internationally since medieval times --> consider the exchange of scholars between Bolgne and Oxford. I agree that in a digital world, international >collaboration is easier. I believe that opening up restrictive copyright combined with open and editable file formats will be enough to trigger global learning space where we can provide free >learning to all students worldwide in a sustainable way. Well, International Collaboration SHOULD be easier. It's very difficult though, primarily because it's so hard to work though how to coordinate things. Just ask a few people at http://www.ccirn.org/ While your interests are in the copyright of content, they're trying to figure out how the networks, in which the progressives work, can be reconfigured so they can coordinate their activities. I keep banging on about "Global disciplinary Groups, not National Institutions" because this is the new reality for both OE "network providers" and "content aggregators". The talk in the uni's network managers' space is reaching towards a new networking model - we can call it Federated Sign On (to a) Cloud. This means that the WE's of the world will log on to their country's institutional networks (NREN) as members of various global groups; whose member institutions share reciprocal rights and apps (which are called "common services" by their techs). It is to "common services" what the wiki model is to "common content". >The Cloud is the way things are going and we host WE in the cloud. This must be combined with open intellectual property policies to ensure organic and sustainable growth. Sorry. Just did a check. I see WE is hosted on Wikipedia's servers since 2006. I wonder if it isn't time for The Wikipedia Foundation to consider using an "open" cloud provider. I would have thought that by going virtual the global hosting costs would plummet. (I used to work as a broker between computer companies and bankers). I do appreciate that both Foundations don't want to be aligned with any one player. But we're getting to the point where some "real time communications" need to be introduced if Jimmy's ideas, about keeping editors and introducing newbies, are to grow legs. http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/lwf-london-2011/ The two developments are now beginning to focus on the need for a "common directory". And just reading through this thread, http://groups.google.com/group/oer-university/browse_thread/thread/ce0658f19 54e59fa# <http://groups.google.com/group/oer-university/browse_thread/thread/ce0658f1 954e59fa> , it's pretty clear that this directory will be pointing to online environments which have global groups of "subject-matter experts" at their core. >I don't think we necessarily need a "common directory" --> what we need is a multitude of directories which can talk seamlessly with one another. OER wants to be free -- it doesn't care which repository or directory references it. Yep. That's what we've got - a multitude of directories all over the place, which don't talk - & which will never talk seamlessly. Only a real live person can do that. This one is SOO important. If WE can share an understanding here, WE're going to turn the world on its head. You see, I'm NOT taking about "the (OE)Resources" ( at least in terms of "content"). I'm talking about "the (OE)Communications". We think alike, so our ideas about "self-organizing communities" will precede any ideas about "command and control". I'm not going to bore you with more talk. Either I get the guys at vivu together with a few NRENs, and offer some (free) real time virtual rooms to a few global groups, or I don't. Gimme a month. Hasta Luego, simon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
