Wednesday 18 July 2007

Noncommercial Isn’t the Problem, ShareAlike Is

Having attended the excellent presentations at the conference, given by Bob Clark and Maureen O'Sullivan, on Intellectual Property Rights and Creative Commons, I thought I was getting to grips with the whole issue of copyright (and even copyleft). But I've just read this blog entry from David Wiley, about licensing and restrictions, and I'm more confused than ever.

He talks about permissible restrictions and license incompatibility. It seems that even those of us who are aware of restrictions and try to do the right thing, are probably getting it wrong. How is any person without legal training supposed to understand the intricacies?

Moreover, and given the current role of CELT in upgrading Blackboard at NUI Galway, what is the responsibility (& liability) of the institution, where staff are making resources available to students through the VLE?

1 comment:

Iain said...

I suppose the test of any such legal issue is what happens when you get sued! But seriously, for the scenario to happen as he describes in his blog someone would have to be sued by CC for using materials non-commercially which would sort of defeat the principle of CC itself, so I doubt it's likely to happen.