Learning4Content/Workshops/eL4C41/Barriers to participation

I am facing a particular problem in relation to participating in Wiki collaboration. This kind of collaborative freely available context is my ideal way to work and I believe very strongly (some would say passionately) that in our context in Africa it is the way to go. However, I work as a consultant and my current "client" is a partnership between two bodies - a large regional NGO and a University. The University is not taking much notice at present as the programme we are currently delivering is not at higher education level. However, the NGO has very clearly stamped all the materials that they developed (with donor funding) as copyright and may not be used without their express permission. My understanding was that we would be working to get all our materials up on an open platform such as oerafrica.org. So now how do I persuade them that this is the way to go? I am about to embark on management of a project to develop the materials for another programme - that should ideally be developed openly and I would like to use my project for this course as the framework. But I wonder how my board will respond. We meet on Thursday morning this week - any suggestions anyone? --Fiona Bulman, 27 July 2010

• interesting conflict, Fiona, thank you for sharing this in the open, apparently, our thoughts were in the same place yesterday and today, I mean: very much near the same topic, mine more general "Openness" revisited and yours hands-on.
  
  I think it might be useful to figure out if among the NGO people the insistence on (what is known today as) traditional copyright is just a habit, by which I mean to suggest: might they actually be interested in knowing how their work (and their name) could be made famous by sharing through e.g. a creative commons licence?
  
  which incentives do you think would do the trick? good examples by competitors?
  :-) C.Koltzenburg, 28 July 2010
  
• Hi CK - have responded on your page.
  

thank you, and see relocation of the central part of it below C.Koltzenburg 05:10, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

• Fiona, if you have sufficient bandwidth, I would suggest taking a look at some of the Creative Commons videos listed here, particularly the first three. Showing any of them to the Board may be a good basis for the discussion. The key point, perhaps, is that by using a CC license, they retain copyright, but they can support reuse and distribution and define limits to that. Note that both at WE and in the open community in general, open means "you are free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike."

  If not, try this text overview.

  For the debate about Non-Commercial versus Share-Alike that is likely to ensue, see this commentary.

  --Daniel Mietchen 15:43, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

  
  

  Thanks Daniel - I did browse the videos and found them very interesting - unfortunately it is too late - I have put into the discussions with my wiki neighbours on my user page that my Board were absolutely determined that we must actually go away from OER and into traditional copyright -so there is a long row to how. I am going to take this up as my wiki project for my own interests even if I can't apply it in the current contract with this client.

• Fiona said on Learning4Content/Workshops/eL4C41/Learning_Contract_Project "I wish somehwere there was a simple (or as simple as possible given the complexity of the web!) table that had on the one side the issues of copyright and how you can enforce it and on the other the "Open options"and the benefits and disadvantages of it. Seriously - is there any way to police one's copyright these days unless you are a huge multinational who employs a team to undertake searches on a regular basis using key words? I am going to have to rethink my project in the face of this" am just placing it here C.Koltzenburg 05:10, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

• See Fiona's comment from 1 August 2010 concerning her newest challenge with respect to this issue.