Violating a Creative Commons License

November 10, 2010 by tombarrett

Last night I was told by Richard Lambert about an Australian company using our “Interesting Ways to use an iPad in the Classroom” resource as a handout at a sales event. You can see the image clearly showing how they have used it, breaking the terms of the CC license. The MD contacted me overnight after the deluge of comments via Twitter. This is my reply to Andrew Bennetto the Managing Director of edsoft Interactive.

I am deeply disappointed about what I saw of the handout for your iPad Breakfast event. The presentation / resource “Interesting Ways to use an iPad in the Classroom” has been crafted by teachers all across the world willing to share their own ideas. That sense of openness and sharing is key to these resources – this ethos has been developed by myself and countless others, not just over a few months, but through years of encouragement and hard work.

Your company violated the terms of the license clearly stated on the title slide of the resource.

Just to be absolutely clear about how the licensing is unavoidable - when you open the document, via whichever link or method available, you see the title slide, which states:

“This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.”

I do not think there is any excuse to say that you were unaware of the license.

The final slide of the presentation also clearly states my name, email address, Twitter name and blog address. It is abundantly clear that I am technically the owner of the document. Once again, no excuse to say you were “not aware of the source.”

From the photograph I have seen that the pages have been edited to remove the names of the teachers that have contributed the idea to make it anonymous. Your logo suggests in fact that you own the document. The teachers who have taken the time to add their ideas deserve the proper attribution and once again this violates the license.

You did not give proper attribution for the entire document – but you also removed the correct attribution for each individual idea.

In your email you apologise, I trust that if it is one of your employees who has created this document that you take appropriate steps to ensure that it never happens again. On behalf of all of the teachers involved with the “Interesting Ways” series it is only right that I staunchly defend and protect the ethical manner with which they have been constructed and should be used.

In your email you go on to ask for permission to use the resource. I am sure you will understand that my answer has to be “No”.

In schools across the world there are teachers trying to educate our children about the correct use of digital content on the web, copyright and honest attribution – you are setting an extremely poor example.

If you share my thoughts on this then please, let’s hear them!

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Anonymous

This comment has a bit of rambling chaos to it.
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Luann Smith

We just studied this in my Educational Technology program and I am glad to see that you are standing up for the Creative Commons License.
http://twitter.com/IaninSheffield Ian Guest

I’m afraid you might be right about the way that many teachers treat material on the web; re-using material without first thinking about the creator’s rights. However I suspect not so much the people who selflessly contribute to ‘Interesting Ways.’ I’d go further and suggest that many of them are people doing their best to help their colleagues understand their obligations in these matters.

As for our contractual commitments, again I suspect you’re right. But I wonder to what extent our employers have ownership of our reflections of activities we undertook whilst ‘on duty.’ Perhaps of the resources we produced whilst on duty, yes. But is the implication that they have rights on how we analyse and reflect on our practice and whether we choose to share those musings amongst a wider community?

I would never claim to be any authority on these matters, but I would have thought CC is more about advising others how they can and cannot use a resource, rather than an attempt to stake a claim to it.

But I’m sure others will tell me otherwise?
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Hans IJzerman

I very much agree with Theo. Some people have quite obviously purposively removed the names that were posted with the original source. You have to go to great lengths to steal something that way. Some posters above talk about this as well already, but I think that Edusoft should go to great lengths to 1) rectify, and 2) support the resource.
Hans IJzerman

This is a very dissappointing development, which unfortunately happens all too often. Teachers, academics are open to share their work with the world (and put many hard hours in), which subsequently can be used for commercial ends. I certainly am much in favor of being open with resources (and using them for academic purposes, or otherwise). However, when another party comes in and essentially steals the resource, this is quite wrong.

Recently, I have had a very similar experience. I am an editor of a magazine where academics write articles about social psychology. These academics do not benefit from this themselves, other people review, and we have editors working on the pieces. This is very time consuming and not central to their day jobs (and in fact the whole process of setting up the magazine is quite time-consuming). Every once in a while I google some pieces of the articles (I am always happy to see when people actually use our resource, but for thinking, and for educational purposes).

It happens quite frequently, but this is perhaps the most blatant example: http://www.c4w.com.au/newsletter/newsletter_jan10.pdf. Look at page 3 and then look at our resource: http://beta.in-mind.org/issue-2/implementing-new-year%E2%80%99s-resolutions. Not only does Chiropractic4Welness verbatim take sentences out of our text, but they do not even acknowledge it!

I have sent them a message asking them to rectify this error, and to pay a small fee (essentially as a donation to maintain our site) for the text. I am not sure whether this is the best approach to take to this. The question is — how can one protect this without shielding the material from the larger public? I am sure that these kind of things happen more often, but can we do something about it?
http://www.effectiveict.co.uk/ Andrew Field

Its just simply not on – regardless of the understanding or appreciation of CC licences. This company took the collaborative effort of a group of teachers and repurposed it, without permission, removing all credit and then apparently used it at a sales event. In this regard your wording is particularly restrained. If they had followed the correct use of the licence then they wouldn’t be able to use it for a commercial purpose. If they’d e-mailed you, discussed a proposal and – most importantly – made sure that they added to and developed the content further for the good of everyone then it might have been possible. The fact the document has had every credit, licence detail and link back to the original document is awful – it is just ripping the good work of others off.

Perhaps it was an employee looking for a quick solution that the MD knew nothing about. Now the company should be making significant efforts to apologise and correct the situation. Paying for your hosting costs for a year, sponsoring future ’30 ideas….’ collaborations or financialy supporting the teaching community in another way. Why is the MD offering to help educate the world about CC licences? Surely they, at best, have illustrated a complete misunderstanding of this specific CC licence. At worst, they’ve knowingly stripped a document and repurposed it for commercial gain.
http://twitter.com/robthill robthill

Is it not amazing how a reputation built up over 20 years can be lost in a single moment! How silly of edsoft.
Mdpkeenan

NOT agreeing with what they did but imagine they had gone to a little bit of effort to disguise the “interesting ways” (- maybe by not calling it “interesting ways!”) and tinkered and tampered with some of the wording and maybe even have put a couple of their own pictures in and then finally instead of whacking the lot out on individual handouts…this might never even have come to the attention of even a sharp eyed follower of Tom’s great work. My point being that the cc licence really does rely on one having a strong moral compass and in business, let’s face it in the economic climate anything shared online is ripe for exploitation!
D Solon

It’s bad enough when other educators do this sort of thing and put their names on other people’s hard work that they share, but a company? Completely irresponsible and unconscionable. Companies have used that old ‘it slipped through the cracks’ line for ages to get away with this sort of thing.
Perhaps Edsoft should make some sort of SIZEABLE MONETARY contribution to “work with you collaboratively to put energy behind this in a positive manner.”
http://twitter.com/HGJohn John Sutton

I’m now pretty confused about what constitutes commercial use. For context, I am a self employed ICT teacher and consultant and have contributed to many of the “Interesting Ways” presentations. If I ran a training session, conference or seminar in which people paid to take part, in the course of which I talked about disseminated or otherwise linked to a CC resource with a non-commercial attribution, would that represent a breach of license? Even though I may have authored a small portion of it? Even though the resources in question were never mentioned in the marketing of the event?
Theo Kuechel

Andrew, thanks for your contribution to this conversation, most helpful. However what I still find difficult to grasp is why, (as I am given to understand), Edusoft felt it necessary to remove the names of the contributors to the resource. This surely leaves Edusoft open to a charge of plagiarism as well as misuse of a Creative Commons licence licence. I think this is the question many of us would like to have answered.
Christo clifford

I absolutely agree with your decision to refuse use in this case. How can we teach children to be honest re downloading and file sharing and appropriate use of copyright materials when companies blatantly break ethical agreements insulting all involved in the intellectual creation of a wonderful resource
Richard

As with Sue, I’m also not clear on what actually constitutes commercial use.

For the Interesting Ways presentation, it could have been used by:

1) Selling the resource or something derived from it
2) Distributing the resources with proper attribution; not directly selling it, but using it to promote other services.
3) Showing the resource on a screen, with proper attribution; talking delegates through it
4) Simply providing a link to it on a handout or blog

Where does the dividing line fall? Doug, I think, is suggesting that it’s between 1) and 2). I tend to agree. What do others think? if the company had reprinted the document, in full, with all licensing and attribution information intact, and without branding it with their own logo, would this constitute violation of the license?

(It can also be quite difficult to define exactly what a “commercial use” is. For example, if a school or LA ran sessions for a network of neighbouring schools, and charged people to attend, would that be commercial use?)
http://kathyschrock.net Kathy

Everyone knows how I feel about violation of the intellectual property of others. Once you have had your work lifted, for commercial purposes or not, under copyright or Creative Commons, you really understand how much it hurts. Creative Commons makes it easy to apply explicit permission for terms of use, and I applaud Tom for his letter.

The fact the item was edited to remove the contributor’s names also eems to indicate that the editing and lack of attribution was intentional. As for Angie Buy’s questions, it would have been fine to direct their participants to the original where it lives on the Web, but attribution is not enough when the terms of use clearly state commercial use is not permitted.
Andrew Bennetto

Hi Tom,

As a business owner/operator of a successful interactive learning business aimed at integrating learning into the classroom and previous publisher of 20 years in a global information business, I am only too aware of author’s, publishers and software development companies rights when it comes to licensing and am fully supportive of the great work that CC has instituted in promoting community understanding of policy and protocols for sharing of content since its establishment around 2002.

As part of our business in helping teachers understand new slate technology, we developed a series of leadership information briefings sessions. In the rush of preparing for one of these, one document from quite a few “got away” from our normal attribution procedure.

As soon as I became aware of it, within the hour, I took responsibility for our actions and I proactively sourced and tracked down your personal email address, sent you an email explaining the situation honestly and genuinely. I also took immediate action for other workshops, dealt directly with some other people’s concern as one does when dealing in a small business environment. I re-inforced to my team the importance of clear procedure and policy and emphasised the importance swiftly.

I mentioned also to you that this was not a conspiracy thing going on to manipulate content, or take advantage of other teachers expertise – we employ former teachers and work closely with the teacher and student community to help integrate technology for over 27 years in which we have built a strong relationship with our customers who know us well for the value, energy and passion we bring to this education market in Australia and New Zealand. While it might not appease some of your readers, it needs to be noted that I am personally passionate about e-learning and the benefits that new technology can bring to learning, to unlock human potential and our ability to drive this through to tangible learning outcomes and improvement in our education system – and I know our loyal customers appreciate our assistance in this regard.

I expressed also my surprise at your response and I mentioned that if we truly wish to help people understand more of the benefits of CC, it will be through effective mutual understanding, compassion and empathetic teaching to obtain sustainable change in the way the education community operates.

The bigger issue is to bring more visibility to the use of CC and the benefits it can afford teachers – the community in this part of the world needs much more ongoing assistance to raise the profile of CC and I would be happy to work with you collaboratively to put energy behind this in a positive manner – after all, we are both in the business of helping teachers succeed.

Andrew Bennetto – Managing Director
edsoft Interactive
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