Pitler, Howard

NSU Works

Innovate: Journal of Online EducationVolume 2Issue 5 June/July 2006 Article 67-1-2006Creative Commons: A New Tool for SchoolsHoward PitlerFollow this and additional works at: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovatePart of the Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education at NSUWorks. It has been accepted forinclusion in Innovate: Journal of Online Education by an authorized administrator of NSUWorks. For more information, please contactnsuworks@nova.edu.Recommended APA CitationPitler, Howard (2006) "Creative Commons: A New Tool for Schools," Innovate: Journal of Online Education: Vol. 2: Iss. 5, Article 6.Available at: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol2/iss5/6Creative Commons: A New Tool for SchoolsAll exhibits, tables and figures that have remained available have been included as additional content withtheir respective articles to be downloaded separately. Click here to return to the article page on NSUWorksand view the supplemental files.Unfortunately, not all the supplemental files have survived until 2015 and some will be missing from thearticle pages. If you are an author in Innovate and would like to have your supplemental content included,please email the NSUWorks repository administrator at nsuworks@nova.edu.This article is available in Innovate: Journal of Online Education: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol2/iss5/6Creative Commons: A New Tool for Schoolsby Howard PitlerA few years ago, I was teaching a middle school class on movie making. One requirement of the course wasan assignment that required students to design a movie including a soundtrack that suited the mood of thevideo. I had encouraged students to use a few online sites for copyright-free music, such as Freeplay Musicor GarageBand, to create their own music. One of my students showed me an early cut of his video, and Inoticed that the music he had used for the soundtrack was a remix of songs by some of his favorite artists.We had discussed copyright guidelines in class, and the student thought that he was within "fair use"because he only used 10-second clips from a number of songs and sampled other sounds into the mix. Sincethe videos were going to be shown outside of our class and entered in a statewide technology contest andsince he also had altered the original music, I advised the student to get permission to use those clips fromthe copyright owner. The story could have ended happily with the record company's agreeing to allow him touse and modify the music. Instead, my student received a very nice but pointed letter telling him in nouncertain terms that the record company would not allow him to use its music, even for the purpose he haddescribed. The technique this student used is called remixing. Remixing is really nothing new. In fact, a typical collegepaper is a remix of sorts; students find the best research material in their field and use that material, withproper attribution, to create a new document that expresses their view on the topic. However, when we moveto different media, a problem arises. Today's technology makes it very easy to take bits of music and soundsand remix those samples into a new work. For educators, the problem with remixing assignments is thatstudents must contact the copyright holder of each piece and ask for permission to use those samples ofother people's work. This is an arduous process, and copyright holders often deny permission to students touse even samples of copyrighted material. Copyright guidelines also apply to information that teachers andstudents post to the Internet. What if teachers or students post videos or soundtracks and want to allowothers to use and even modify those works? What specific language do they need to include on their Websites to allow for such use? How can an end user know the intentions of the creator of material that is widelyavailable online?In this article I briefly assess the current state of copyright law as it applies to instructors seeking to use,modify, or redistribute materials for educational purposes; I then offer an overview of Creative Commons, aninitiative that essentially overcomes some of the constraints and ambiguities that have characterizedtraditional copyright law, particularly with regard to materials available over the Internet. For those who seekto reuse or alter Internet content in educational settings, Creative Commons provides a legal framework thatclarifies the intent of creators and thereby allows for future innovation.Copyright Issues in EducationCopyright law, especially the fair use policy, has been a significant gray area for teachers and students.Teachers often believe they can use just about any material in their classrooms as long as they use thatmaterial for an educational purpose. Some educators think that pictures, music, and text on the Internet canbe downloaded and used freely because the material does not have the copyright symbol attached. However,copyright is attached to a work as soon as it is saved to the computer or sent to the Web. According to theUnited States Copyright Office (2000, "How to Secure a Copyright," ¶ 2):Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in ahttp://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 1Pitler: Creative Commons: A New Tool for SchoolsPublished by NSUWorks, 2006copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visuallyperceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music,film, videotape, or microfilm.In other words, if a work is found on the Internet, it has automatically been copyrighted. In order to defend their use of copyrighted materials in the educational arena, educators and students oftenappeal to the principles of fair use. But what is fair use? Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 110 (2) of the CopyrightAct (2002)—commonly referred to as the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH)Act— provides some guidance for educators. For example, the TEACH act indicates that the work in questionshould only be presented "at the direction of, or under the actual supervision of, an instructor as an integralpart of a class session offered as a regular part of the systematic mediated instructional activities of agovernmental body or an accredited nonprofit educational institution" (¶ A). The material must be "directlyrelated and of material assistance to the teaching content of the transmission" (¶ B). Distribution of the workmust be limited to "students officially enrolled in the course for which the transmission is made" or"employees of governmental bodies as a part of their official duties or employment" (¶ C i, ii). Translated intolayman's terms, educators should consider four issues when determining if a work is allowed under theprinciples of fair use:• the purpose and character of the use,• the nature of the copyrighted work, • the amount and substantiality of the portion to be used, and• the effect of the use upon the potential market.In assessing copyright infringment, judges use these four issues as guidelines; however, they are free toadapt these concerns on a case-by-case basis. Because the courts have a high degree of discretion, it isdifficult to predict the outcome of any one particular case (Stanford University Libraries 2004).It is possible for educators or students to contact the copyright owner(s) of a given work in order to securepermission or a license to use that work in a very specific manner. However, this process is often extremelydifficult. In some cases, the work's creator has died, but the copyright remains because copyright lasts for 95years from a work's first publication or 120 years from its creation, whichever expires first. In other cases, itcan be almost impossible to secure a license for something that is still within the copyright term but is nolonger in print. Even when copyright owners can be located, getting a license to use their work is certainly notguaranteed, as my former student discovered.Creative CommonsEnter Creative Commons. Created in 2001, Creative Commons is a way for creators of intellectual content todeclare their work as having "some rights reserved" rather than the "all rights reserved" designation thatcopyright usually entails. A Creative Commons license gives users specific rights as determined by a work'screator. For example, a musician might license her work so that others can use or modify it freely as long asthey do not use the work for commercial purposes. Another musician might allow his work to be usedcommercially but might not allow any modification of that work. Still a third might allow his soundtrack to beused and modified but require that others use it only under a license identical to the one that governs thelicensor's work.How does this process work? Licensing a work under Creative Commons is really a matter of a few mouseclicks. Before posting something to the Internet, creators visit the Creative Commons Web site and click the"Publish" button. This action introduces four options:1. The first option asks creators to indicate, with response options of "yes" and "no," whether they wish tohttp://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 2Innovate: Journal of Online Education, Vol. 2, Iss. 5 [2006], Art. 6http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol2/iss5/6allow commercial uses of their work.2. The second option asks creators to indicate, with response options of "yes," "yes, as long as othersshare alike," and "no," whether they wish to allow modifications to their work. 3. The third option requires creators to select the jurisdiction of the license from a pull-down menu thatlists numerous countries and a default value of "generic."4. The fourth option requires creators to indicate the format of the work from a pull-down menu thatconsists of the response options of "Audio," "Video," "Image," "Text," "Interactive," or "Other." After responding to these options, creators click the "select a license" button, and the site provides HTMLcode for creators to attach to online works. For offline works, creators can select a license, include astatement indicating that the work is licensed under Creative Commons, and indicate where users can locatea copy of that license. The license clearly states the creator's intentions and lets users know what is allowedand what is prohibited. Creative Commons and Copyright LawIs all this legal? Fellows and students at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law Schoolhelped get the Creative Commons project off the ground, and the current chair of the board for CreativeCommons, Lawrence Lessig, is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Centerfor Internet and Society (CIS). Other members of the board include James Boyle, a professor of law at DukeUniversity School of Law, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, an assistant professor at the University of MichiganLaw School, and Michael Carroll, an assistant professor of law at the Villanova University School of Law.Because legal professionals have had such an important role in creating the program, it is safe to assumethat a number of lawyers have checked all Creative Commons documents to be sure they conform to legalrequirements.The structure of the Creative Commons license reflects the careful planning of the board members and theircolleagues. Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different formats: a Commons Deed, which isa very easy-to-understand summary written in plain language that shows the key license terms; the LegalCode, which—for non-lawyers—is a much less easy-to-understand document that includes all of the requiredlegal language; and finally, in metadata that describes the license conditions that are attached to the work. When asked about how well the Creative Commons license has held up in the courts, Mia Garlick, GeneralCounsel for Creative Commons, replied:To date, to the best of our knowledge, no court has considered a Creative Commons license. There havebeen disputes, but as far as we are aware, they have all been resolved without the need to bring the matter tothe attention of a court. Copyright licenses are not a new area of law. Public licenses are a relatively newarea of the law and in a case—Netfilter v. Sitecom—before a Munich court in 2004, one of the earliest typesof public licenses—the General Public License—was held to be enforceable under German law.Consequently, it seems likely that a court will not view a public copyright license invalid simply because it is apublic license. (personal communication, January 9, 2006)The Creative Commons license process does provide a legal way for an author or content creator to indicatehow their work can and can not be shared or remixed. It is reassuring to know that the concept of publiccopyright license does have legal precedence.A Growing TrendThe Creative Commons idea is already catching on in mainstream education. In 2001, for example,Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began the OpenCourseWare initiative. As of August 2005, therehttp://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 3Pitler: Creative Commons: A New Tool for SchoolsPublished by NSUWorks, 2006were 1,435 MIT courses available online, free and open to the public. The project goal is to have all of MIT'sundergraduate and graduate courses available by 2007. Similarly, 110 courses and 2,647 modules are nowavailable through the Connexions project at Rice University. Students can also take music lessons and learnmusicology from instructors at Berklee College of Music through the Berklee Shares project. All of theseprojects operate under the Creative Commons license.Creative Commons licensed music is found on a number of Web sites, including Opsound, the FreesoundProject created by the Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, Spain, andccMixter, a project of Creative Commons. On these and other sites, thousands of music tracks are currentlyavailable for using and remixing in student work, and more than 4.5 million images licensed by CreativeCommons are currently available online at sites like Flickr and Open Photo.An example of remixing in action is a recent contest sponsored by Creative Commons, Warner BrothersRecords, and Machine Shop Recordings. The recording group Fort Minor provided the separated audioelements of their hit song "Remember the Name" online under a Creative Commons BY-NC license so thatproducers all over the world could easily create remixes of the song. The contest rules required participantsto use the vocal track of the original song and allowed them to create a totally new product by remixing othertracks, both from the original song, other songs, or tracks they personally created. All of the new songs alsohad to carry the Creative Commons BY-NC license.Implications for Educators Teachers and students should begin using this alternative to traditional copyright for a few reasons. Onereason to include a Creative Commons license on work sent to the Internet is that it gives clear guidance toothers of the creator's intent. As teachers and students are both consumers and creators of content on theWeb, using and posting content with a Creative Commons license attached leaves no doubt regarding theintentions of the author. A second reason is that by talking about Creative Commons in both K-12 and collegeclassrooms, teachers can engage students in a much-needed conversation about online ethics. As studentsbecome active creators rather than just consumers of information, how do they feel about their material beingused? Do they want to attach a "some rights reserved" license to some of their creative products? How doesthis then translate to those using the intellectual property of others with or without explicit permission? In theelementary and middle school classroom, this conversation might focus on plagiarism and the differencebetween copying, citing, and remixing material students find on the Web. Students in high school and collegemight discuss the relative merits of sharing work using a Creative Commons license as opposed to postingmaterial with a conventional copyright. Most importantly, bringing Creative Commons to the classroom gives students and teachers a new tool forfinding material that is both appropriate and legal to use and remix; Creative Commons allows an astonishingdegree of access to interesting work. Through this initiative and others like it, teachers and students canbegin creating and legally sharing projects, lessons, and even complete courses, and students throughout theworld can benefit from collective knowledge. For example, The Letters of W. B. Yeats edited by Allan Wadeand published by Hart-Davis (1954) is one of hundreds of works available under a Creative Commonslicense. The Creative Commons site also includes libraries of images, videos, lesson plans, and coursepackets. As students and teachers employ such materials for their own educational projects, they can alsosee themselves as active contributors to a wider community of learning.ConclusionAs the rapid growth of the Internet has tended to outpace the legal frameworks that govern the exchange ofintellectual and creative materials, those who seek to maximize the potential of online technology foreducational purposes have had good reason to avoid the headaches of copyright law altogether. Yet withCreative Commons, students and teachers alike now have a powerful tool and resource for their educationalactivities as well as a means to situate the materials they create within a larger envrionment of collaborativehttp://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 4Innovate: Journal of Online Education, Vol. 2, Iss. 5 [2006], Art. 6http://nsuworks.nova.edu/innovate/vol2/iss5/6learning that extends far beyond their immediate context. As such, Creative Commons represents a vital stepforward in realizing the full promise of online technology to promote new forms of teaching and learning.ReferencesStanford University Libraries. 2004. Copyright & fair use.http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html (accessed May 3, 2006).United States Copyright Office. 2000. Copyright basics. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#cno(accessed May 3, 2006).United States Copyright Office. 2002. Copyright law of the United States of America.http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#110 (accessed May 3, 2006). Yeats, W. B. 1954. The letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. A. Wade. London: Hart-Davis. COPYRIGHT AND CITATION INFORMATION FOR THIS ARTICLEThis article may be reproduced and distributed for educational purposes if the following attribution is included in the document:  Note: This article was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: Pitler, H. 2006. Creative commons: A newtool for schools. Innovate 2 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 (accessed April 24, 2008). The articleis reprinted here with permission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova SoutheasternUniversity.To find related articles, view the webcast, or comment publically on this article in the discussion forums, please goto http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251  and select the appropriate function from thesidebar. http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 5Pitler: Creative Commons: A New Tool for SchoolsPublished by NSUWorks, 2006

Creative Commons: A New Tool for Schools

http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=innovate

Creative Commons: A New Tool for Schools

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

NSU Works