In this article column from The Chronicle of Higher Education, the author shows how the real-world implications of licenses and how difficult it can be, at times, to choose how we want to share the work that we’re doing. This is particularly important for us as Social Mediums. Not only are we content creators (as any graduate students are), but we’re also content sharers and so we need to know the nuances of licenses–including the myriad Creative Commons licenses and be able to confidently share content on our social media. — Social Mediums

I don’t know how common it is for folks to have to explain Creative Commons licenses for others, but it often feels like a “continuously negotiated” thing (to use Catherine Cronin’s term). So I recently had a conversation that went something like this, with a professor who wants to create an open textbook (the actual discussion was slightly more complex and with more people involved):

Me: so what kind of license do you want on the book?
Prof: I am happy for people to reuse it as long as they attribute me.
Me: Do you want to allow people to make derivatives of your work? To remix it?
Prof: huh. That wouldn’t make sense. It wouldn’t make sense divided up.
Me: but would it bother you if someone was teaching something and needed to take parts of it and merge them with other stuff? I mean, if you don’t allow it, they could still link to page X of it…
Prof: ok then. I’m ok with derivatives. No wait. There are parts of it, the ones I took from others with permission. We can’t have derivatives of those. Should I make the entire book no derivatives?
Me: Well.. What about translations? Do you want to prevent those?
Prof: No, I want to allow that.
Me: Ah. Ok. Umm maybe we clarify somewhere in the book what you mean to allow and what not. What about commercial use? Do you want to allow that?
Prof: No. I don’t wanna allow anyone to monetize my work
Me: What about a professor at a for-profit University or a private tutor who’s getting paid to tutor. Do you want to allow them to use it?
Prof: Of course…
Me: But you don’t want people to sell the book, is what you mean?
Prof: Yes. That.
Me: OK. Maybe we have a CC-BY-NC-ND license but write somewhere in the book when you consider commerical use and derivatives ok.
Prof: sounds good.

I go off and remind myself for the 100th time what the NC license means. I am reminded again that it relies heavily on human judgment of what is considered “primarily for commercial purposes” but I also notice, for the first time, that Creative Commons discourage people from making up their own interpretations of licenses. I realize creating more nuanced licenses is a headache and would confuse people. But I don’t understand why you would create a license that is intentionally flexible (and therefore vague but in a good way) and not want authors to clarify why they chose a particular license. Why would it be inadvisable to explain what I allow without asking permission and what I would like to be asked permission for?

Read the rest: Openness, Permission, Courtesy and Nuances of Licenses

[“Permission to land” flickr photo by creyesk shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license]