Creative Commons: A Brief Introduction for Community College Faculty Using OER

Creative Commons Certificate Class, Fall 2024, Assignment #1, Kathy Sparling

1. Creative Commons A Brief Introduction for Community College Faculty Using OER Creative Commons: A Brief Introduction for Community College Faculty Using OER © 2024 by Kathy Sparling is licensed under CC BY 4.0

2. What Is This Thing Called "Creative Commons"? Creative Commons can refer to:  A set of licenses that give creators more flexibility in the permissions they allow for their copyrighted works. We'll explore the details of various types of CC licenses in a separate presentation. For now, know: Under U.S. law, Copyright of the "all rights reserved" variety is automatically granted to authors of new works. Creators of OER and other open resources use CC licenses to allow expanded permissions for their copyrighted works, often allowing them to be used with only an attribution to the author. As an OER adopter, you already know the impact open licenses can have in education and in scholarly publishing.

3. What Is This Thing Called "Creative Commons"? CC licenses are not obscure legal tools used only in academia! CC licenses and other legal tools are today used on about 2.5 billion works of all types* If you use flickr , Youtube , pixabay , unsplash , google limiters, OER repositories, or any number of other digital repositories and websites, you've seen these licenses. They look like this: In these and other communities of shared practices, increasingly including major galleries, libraries, archives and museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the CC licenses also signal shared community values of openness, collaboration, and non-commodified constructions of knowledge and culture. * “Creative Commons Today ” ( https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/1-2-creative-commons-today/ ) by Creative Commons . CC BY 4.0 .  Creative commons , CC BY 2.5 , via Wikimedia Commons

4. What Is This Thing Called "Creative Commons"? Along with the legal tools, Creative Commons can ALSO refer to: A global movement of lefty loons* interested in openness, collaboration, and free culture AND A non-profit organization, with a small and decentralized staff, and volunteers worldwide, all dedicated to supporting the use of the CC licenses and the projects of the lefty loons*. *This is a gentle, humorous reference to the words of one of the founding fathers of Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig. Discussing his preparations for arguments before the Supreme Court in a case that would ultimately lead him to create Creative Commons (more on that in a bit) Lessig describes the perceived need to tone down the politically progressive thrust of his arguments, diversifying the supporting briefs with conservative and industry voices:  " the court would not hear our arguments if it thought these were just the arguments of a group of lefty loons." * * Lessig, L. (2004). How I lost the big one. Legal Affairs. Retrieved September, 26 2024. Photo of left-leaning loon, openly licensed CC BY, with its attribution below: John Picken from Chicago, USA , CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

5. Now You Are Shifting in Your Chair and Asking Yourself: " I just want my students to use a free textbook... "Why am I learning about legal battles, nonprofit organizations, global movements, and Canadian waterfowl?"

6. A Little Context: Working with Open Educational Resources (OER) – whether you are adopting existing sources, remixing multiple sources, or creating your own open materials – requires a basic understanding of how these resources are licensed, the uses the licenses permit, and the specific terms of those permissions . OER and Creative Commons licenses exist in a historical and present-day context – understanding this context will help you use OER ethically and legally . As an adopter/creator of OER you are already part of a global network of people involved in Open Culture; this presentation will suggest ways to become more involved with Open Culture should you wish to .

7. What Led to the Creation of the Creative Commons?   A Brief History (Pt. 1: Through the 1970s ) First, there was the Constitution, with adorable antique Capitalization, laying out the Principle: “Congress shall have the Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Then, over many decades, there were a LOT of extensions enacted by Congress resulting in "limited Times" becoming arguably not very limited at all. In the case of copyrights for individuals, for example, we went from a one-time renewable 14-year term specified in the first Copyright Act of 1790, to  the length of the author's life + 50 years by the end of the 1970s . This government document is in the public domain.

8. What Led to the Creation of the Creative Commons?    A Brief History (Pt. 2: CTEA) In 1998, the most recent of these extensions -- the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) -- was passed, extending the period of individual copyrights to 70 years after the death of the author. The Law was named in honor of the deceased "Sonny & Cher" pop singer, later a congressman, who according to his widow believed copyright should be forever.* The result was that works that were just about to come into the public domain at the end of the 1990s retained their copyrights an additional 20 years. * Lessig, L. (2005). Free Culture . New York: Penguin Books.

9. What Led to the Creation of the Creative Commons?    A Brief History (Pt. 2: CTEA) For example, the CTEA prevented the earliest incarnation of Mickey Mouse, among other valuable corporately owned works, from coming into the public domain (until 2024! So there he is). Critics of the law saw it as a blatant favoring of corporate interests over public good, dubbing the CTEA the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act." Walt Disney , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

10. What Led to the Creation of the Creative Commons?    A Brief History (Pt. 3: Eldred vs. Ashcroft) Along with being suspiciously good for corporate interests, the CTEA was viewed as unconstitutional by many legal scholars, including Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. Acting on behalf of the plaintiff Eric Eldred , a web publisher of public domain content, Lessig brought legal challenges against the law, ultimately arguing at the US Supreme Court that the ongoing series of "limited Time" extensions were an overreach of Congressional powers, unconstitutional on the basis of previous Supreme Court precedent.* The Court ruled against Lessig in Eldred vs. Ashcroft, and the CTEA stood. *Lessig, L. (2004). How I lost the big one. Legal Affairs. Retrieved September, 26 2024.

11. Basically, It Was:

12. See What I Did There? Wait. Can I do that? Can I copy two commercial intellectual properties, one from a notoriously litigious massive media conglomerate and one from the estate of a major popstar/congressman/believer in forever copyrights, and mash them together into a video like that? More specifically, could I do that in 1998?* *I definitely couldn't in 1998 because I was using WordPerfect on a Pentium desktop the size of a small car, but we're speaking about principles here.

13. Probably. Because Fair Use. Both Minnie and the Sonny & Cher performance recording were under copyright in 1998. So here my mind ticks through the fair use "checklist": parody, criticism, small snippet, educational purposes, so little audience as to pose zero impact on either's market. I'm probably good. Probably.* *This type of cumbersome deliberative process, necessary for every single invocation of "Fair Use," and ultimately only "settled" once examined by a judge, with Disney lawyers on one side, and me on the other, certainly has a chilling effect on brilliant creative uses like my little mash up video, leading to fewer brilliant creative works by the cautious, rampant law-breaking by the bold, and further litigious pocket-lining by large commercial intellectual property holders who couldn't draw a cartoon mouse with luxurious eyelashes any more than I could, and I couldn't, hence the copy/paste.

14. And Furthermore? What if the cartoon rodent I wanted to use wasn't even Minnie, but the work of an artist who was ALL IN with my using it to create something new? How would I know I could? Actually, I may look all countercultural, but I'm ©Robert Armstrong and all rights are reserved, so please find another open rodent example. Or whatever, I'm not gonna sue.

15. 2002: Creative Commons is Born The founders of Creative Commons, including Lawrence Lessig, wanted to provide a way for creators to make explicit that their works were okay to use, especially as the very nature of the Internet made such sharing and copying much, much easier and more common. They recognized a tension or mismatch between the types of digital age "copying" that have become "like breathing," to paraphrase Cory Doctorow,* on the one hand,  and the restrictions of copyright law's "one size fits all" rights structure on the other. The CC Licenses were intended – and have successfully functioned – to provide a more flexible system for modern, networked sharing and cultural collaboration. Just like the flexibility and collaboration you are finding with the OER textbooks you are creating, curating and using! * [ACMSIGGRAPH]. (2011, August 10). Sign in 11:46 / 46:28 SIGGRAPH 2011 : Cory Doctorow's Keynote Address [Video]. Youtube . https://youtu.be/hfU6e6--izo?si=vD4GeeAe_wAipBye

16. Interested in More? This presentation has been a very brief introduction to Creative Commons, based largely on information from the CC itself*. For much more information: Explore the Creative Commons website to learn more about Creative Commons and for multiple ways to join the movement: from a newsletter subscription to financial donations to networking with others on social media, slack or, more formally, in a Community of Interest "Platform." See also the CC Global Network (CCGN) website, to connect with worldwide chapters of volunteers engaged in supporting activities and activism around the Open movement. “Creative Commons Today” ( https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/1-what-is-creative-commons/ ) by Creative Commons . CC BY 4.0 .