© Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved JISC Creative Commons study: interim review Hugh Look Senior Consultant Rightscom Ltd

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 2 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Creative Commons and… ► Throughout this talk, “Creative Commons” also means: ► Creative Archive ► AESharenet ► Science Commons ► …and other related initiatives following the same principles ► Also allows for local licences aimed at wide distribution with minimal constraints ► Rather than controlled distribution

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 3 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Creative Commons itself is changing ► Recent developments include ► “Freedoms License Chooser” ► Allows licensors to add additional metadata including links to other terms

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 4 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 5 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 6 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved The project: objectives ► Report on the usage, benefits and drawbacks of Creative Commons licensing ► …and similar model licences ► Identify opportunities for these and other model licences that JISC and institutions might use ► To ensure optimum re-use of content created within or for the HE and FE communities ► Consider… ► Drivers ► Barriers ► Benefits ► Risks ► …created by such innovation

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 7 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved The project: process ► 5 case studies ► Many interviews ► Focus group of practitioners ► Expert group including: ► Legal experts ► Policymakers ► Academics ► BBC ► Open University ► Other stakeholders – including authors, designers, publishers, activists ► Scenarios: to identify how Creative Commons will work in “edge cases” ► Discussed by Expert Group ► Analysis, conclusions & recommendations

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 8 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Findings from case studies and interviews ► Generally we found positive views on CC from the UK academic community ► Creative Commons makes a powerful statement about sharing ► Creative Commons seen as clarifying, simplifying and enabling ► Enthusiastic support from minority ► Re-use is major goal for several projects ► But not uncontrolled re-use ► Re-use opportunities are not yet widely exploited by users ► Not a clear definition of what re-use is ► Access for all users is an important motivator ► Narrow and wide community benefits ► Although Creative Commons licences are in use in the UK academic community, there is as yet little direct experience of their impact ► Mainly a function of time - early days ► Complicated by lack of experience with learning objects, VLEs & related technology

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 9 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Findings from case studies and interviews (2) ► Liability for third-party content infringement is a major issue ► Some projects do not believe that it is possible to proceed without indemnities ► Some have succeeded in obtaining indemnities ► Others have adopted a trust model ► It may be possible to minimise risk of liability by having a different deposit licence from usage licence ► Protection of other content (e.g. personal information) ► Datasets: how does CC interact with database rights? ► Perception that academics adopting CC “because it’s cool” ► Identified by a number of projects and people interviewed ► Not thinking through what they really want ► Many not be aware of the implications ► May not have read the actual licence terms

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 10 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Findings from case studies and interviews (3) ► Differences in requirements for ► Research outputs and resources ► Learning and teaching resources ► Perception that institutions have not thought through their policies ► Little sign of enforcement by institution ► Hard to identify senior-level ownership of these issues ► Little interest from institutional policymakers/service providers (contracts officers etc) – most apparently unaware of the issues ► Creative Commons is not always flexible enough to deal with new requirements ► Machine interpretability not important at this stage ► What would they have done instead?

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 11 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Other issues revealed in background research ► Convergence with two public policy agendas ► Increasing access to research outputs ► Review of value of intellectual property’s relationship to public benefit ► A reaction against complexity and lack of transparency in IPR ► Response to lengthy negotiations in licensing ► It can be hard to unlock the perceived connection between Creative Commons and Open Access ► Highest levels of adoption may be among informal content creators – bloggers etc ► Greatest problems may be in institution to institution licensing ► Institution to individual less problematic ► May be problems when resources are held in a service that needs authentication ► Licensor & licensee can’t negotiate any aspects of a licence ► Difficult to have Creative Commons where there is “universal deposit” (e.g. by students)

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 12 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Other issues revealed in background research (2) ► Potentially confusing proliferation of licence terms may go counter the objectives of simplification and increased transparency and make it hard to licensors to choose appropriately ► Creative Archive ► Science Commons ► Clinical Commons ► Etc etc ► In the UK, Creative Commons may be a contract ► Would require a “consideration” to be valid in England & Wales ► Not the case in Scotland ► How to understand the law where the licence is made available? ► Relationship between Creative Commons and DRM ► Gathering information about usage is impossible ► Tensions between commons production and commons licensing ► What about database rights? ► Much UK research output is data ► What about moral rights?

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 13 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Some high-level issues

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 14 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Some high-level issues ► Lines of discourse that don’t always meet up ► The theoretical debate > “Should we do this?” > “What can we use this for?” ► The pragmatic debate > “Is it safe to do this?” > “What are the limitations?” ► Many of the proponents deal mainly in long-term benefits to society ► Many of the less convinced see mainly pragmatic problems ► Trade-off between flexibility and simplicity ► Risk of creating large numbers of minor variants in order to meet local needs

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 15 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Creative Commons as an innovation ► Innovations can have good or bad consequences ► They have no inherent “virtues” or “vices” ► Need to keep a close focus on drivers and impact ► Study aims for analysis and objectivity ► It is helping to form policy for JISC ► Need to address long-term goals as well as short-term drivers & barriers ► Sustaining or disruptive innovation? ► All innovations can create powerful agendas > However well-thought-out or ill-thought-out

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 16 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved What is the future for CC and similar licences? ► Is CC better adapted to some forms of research output than it is to learning/teaching objects? ► Which drivers/factors will have the most impact ► On CC as a whole? ► On its use in UK academic communities? ► How to make the theoretical and practical streams of thought join up? ► What are the alternatives?

JISC Creative Commons study: presentation 13 December 2006 to JISC Legal & Policy Cluster meeting 17 © Rightscom 2006 – All rights reserved Thank you Hugh Look (0)