{"id":1101,"date":"2019-05-23T21:09:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T21:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/?p=1101"},"modified":"2019-05-24T15:52:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T15:52:27","slug":"dont-tell-me-how-to-cc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/dont-tell-me-how-to-cc\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Tell Me How To CC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seems to be conference time, and with that comes disjointed Tweets that lose a lot of context. Yes I&#8217;m aware that I&#8217;m guilty of Tweeting during conference sessions and not always including more context. What came through my feed today was this:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Hmmmm&#8230;. Downloadable yes, but editable? I suppose you could edit for your own private purposes, but most editing tends to assume a need for redistribution, so the work has to also be SA, not just CC BY. No? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/MXz7HOzzdR\">https:\/\/t.co\/MXz7HOzzdR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Apostolos K. (@koutropoulos) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/koutropoulos\/status\/1131596675997425670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 23, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>First, the statement of &#8220;don&#8217;t slap a CC BY license on your work if {conditions}&#8221;. I get it, there is value as a downstream user to people providing CC Licensed material provide is as a stand alone file and in a format I can use. Seeing that it&#8217;s a conference hashtag you can pretty well assume that it is educational material (textbook-y or assignment-y in nature) and that ends up meaning that you should provide the word documents to anyone viewing the material is you CC-BY license that work.<\/p>\n<p>These kinds of statements are really problematic though, and you don&#8217;t have to lean on them too far to see where problems emerge. For example, if I create a video and upload it to YouTube I have the option of assigning a CC-BY license. Other YouTube users can use the material and it&#8217;s open access. But even if downstream users can access it, then am I also supposed to provide the video editing file, and also all of the assets? What if the downstream user doesn&#8217;t use the same video editing software I used. Then it&#8217;s not really editable now is it? So you&#8217;re telling me not to use the CC license and therefore leaving all copyright restrictions on the work. That doesn&#8217;t seem very helpful.<\/p>\n<p>In making educational content we combine body text along with tables and figures. If I need to make all of the content editable, does that mean I need also include all of the source files? Or if I share a photograph, do I have to share the raw file and not any output? Or if I create a digital image and want to share it as CC-BY, then do I have to share the AI or PS file along with any additional assets? Sure, some downstream users might be able to edit what I&#8217;ve created, but others won&#8217;t be able to.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve mentioned software a few times already, but what about the cases where just technical skill isn&#8217;t there. I&#8217;ve downloaded my fair share of web templates from GitHub. Some I can work with (usually wordpress themes), but without changing any of the code. In other cases, the templates are openly licensed and downloadable, but completely unusable for me because I don&#8217;t know the first thing about JSON. So what use are those files to me as a downstream user?<\/p>\n<p>These kinds of hardened rules telling creators what they should and should not do is not in the spirit of creative commons and open education as I&#8217;ve known it.<\/p>\n<p>Rant aside, I did find a bit more context for the Tweet:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Rajiv: Don&#8217;t publish everything at a PDF! They&#8217;re fine, but should not be the only species. Publish in editable formats. Don&#8217;t put a CC license on things that aren&#8217;t downloadable &amp; editable. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NEOERSummit2019?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#NEOERSummit2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Matthew Cheney (@finiteeyes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/finiteeyes\/status\/1131199460074147841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 22, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I still disagree with the final imperative of &#8220;don&#8217;t CC license things that aren&#8217;t downloadable &amp; editable&#8221;. I think there&#8217;s some room for nuance here. But the beginning qualifier of &#8220;PDFs shouldn&#8217;t be the only species&#8221; allows for us to have a conversation rather than imposing our own beliefs onto everyone without considering different viewpoints and contexts.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.behance.net\/gallery\/5783221\/Creative-Commons-poster\" data-v-247c12f1=\"\">&#8220;Creative Commons poster&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0<span data-v-247c12f1=\"\">by\u00a0Piotr Chuchla<\/span>\u00a0is licensed under\u00a0<a class=\"photo_license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/?ref=ccsearch&amp;atype=rich\" data-v-247c12f1=\"\">CC BY-SA 4.0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Update<\/h2>\n<p>Well, I woke up to a lively conversation in my Twitter mentions this morning around this very topic. Rajiv was able to jump in and clarify his position that &#8220;don&#8217;t publish OER as PDF&#8221; was not an edict but a suggestion:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Again, not an edict. Agree that ease of editing is not a pre requisite, although hopefully\/eventually a norm. If we can slowly make life easier we should. E.g., I was able to adapt my first open textbook easily because I could download it in MS Word. Made all the difference.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Rajiv Jhangiani (@thatpsychprof) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thatpsychprof\/status\/1131931687015706626?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 24, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Basically, the argument boils down to trying to remove technical barriers to downstream adopters\/adapters. Billy Meinke-Lau followed-up with the ALMS framework, which once I saw it I recalled reading years ago:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">And while we\u2019re on it, a (somewhat ironically) helpful framework for understanding how technical choices can make content less open, the ALMS framework lives just beneath the 5 Rs on <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PxgKq76MRV\">https:\/\/t.co\/PxgKq76MRV<\/a>. Ironic b\/c Lumen OER courses are not easily downloadable or reusable. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/jLGmJLLHjK\">pic.twitter.com\/jLGmJLLHjK<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Billy Meinke-Lau (@billymeinke) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/billymeinke\/status\/1131943223436251136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 24, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Overall, there could still be endless hair splitting over what it means to be editable. Even in the ALMS framework they&#8217;re still talking primarily about text (comparing a scan of handwriting to a text file), but that still starts to fall apart when you consider other media. Is an MP4 output alone meaningfully editable for revising and remixing? Is an Mp3? Is a PNG?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been on the receiving end of hard to view and adopt\/adapt OERs numerous times (a brief look through the MERLOT repository will likely give you a similar experience). Over time, the PDF is likely to be a very stable format, and I think there is some merit to that, especially with OCR getting better all the time. And while PDFs have technical limitations, it&#8217;s still better to have one CC-BY than not, or even CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-ND, because that still gives downstream users permissions to work with the content and adapt it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying Rajiv&#8217;s exact statement was an imperative to never use PDFs, or that PDFs are where OER go to die (he&#8217;s clarified his point I think). But the kind of rhetoric I&#8217;ve seen around CC and OER over the last few years has really shifted from &#8216;sharing is caring&#8217; to &#8216;if you want into the club you HAVE to do things this way&#8217;. I&#8217;d certainly find the messaging more agreeable if we didn&#8217;t tell people what they should or shouldn&#8217;t do with their creative output and shifted back to considerations for downstream users. And if after that consideration you still choose to output a PDF, then that&#8217;s fine, at least you took the time to reflect on that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seems to be conference time, and with that comes disjointed Tweets that lose a lot of context. Yes I&#8217;m aware that I&#8217;m guilty of Tweeting during conference sessions and not always including more context. What came through my feed today was this: Hmmmm&#8230;. Downloadable yes, but editable? I suppose you could edit for your own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-quick-reflections-and-webmentions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/files\/2019\/05\/07d6e845329805.56079dbe52588.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1107,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions\/1107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}