Copyright of digital works/Resources
- video - A Fair(y) Use Tale - Disney Parody explanation of Copyright Law and Fair Use. http://youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo
- video - Get Creative - This short film covers the basics of Creative Commons formed, what they do, and how they do it. http://creativecommons.org/support/videos#gc
- Creative Commons - movies, comics, information and FAQ relating to the Creative Commons licenses
- video - Amen beat - This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip. http://youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac
Finding and reusing learning resources
With so many great resources already out there on the net, why re-invent the wheel. WHatever your subject, whatever your need, chances are there is someone else in the world that has already produced it, and made it available for free and open reuse.
When sourcing such content, be careful to check the copyright statement for all items before you attempt to use it. Creative Commons.org has made this usually painful process quite simple. Yahoo.com indexed over 80 million CC items loaded to the Internet in 2005. Major universities and learning organisation are lisencing their content and resources Creative Commons. These initiatives are generally called open courseware initiatives, and we are free to use and even modify some of the content that is made available this way.
The most significant projects include Wikipedia and Wikiversity, where people are collaborating to produce free and open resources which use GNU licences.
GNU Licenses are based on 4 freedoms or rights.
- use the work for any purpose
- study its mechanisms, to be able to modify and adapt it to their own needs
- make and distribute copies, in whole or in part
- enhance and/or extend the work and share the result similarly.
Uses for Free and Open Courseware
- Cost effective way to build learning resources (all the content in these workshops are taken from CC lisences)
- Marketing of programmes and courses
- Social acess and equity to learning resources
- Simplies copy right and Intellectual Property concerns
- A wider range of inputs to a resource development
More information about Free and Open Courseware
