Feb 22 meeting notes

From openmichigan

• umich fair use conference call
• february 22, 2008
• 1-2pm EST

Attendees

• jack bernard, ted hanss, joseph hardin, ahrash bissell, pieter kleymeer, anthony falzone, garin fons, timothy vollmer

Proceedings

• Joseph
  • explained Michigan's OCW/OER initiative in general and with the health sciences at Michigan.
  • been in discussions with other OCW groups like MIT (who don't explore any fair uses) and Notre Dame (who've done so in a limited fashion)
  • what to call this initiative? FUse? other ideas?
  • umich has been working on the procedures and protocols for the dScribe process, and have incorporated fair use into this process
  • exploring fair use within the OCW context is:
    • good idea in that it helps represent the "best" content (in theory) and aligns with faculty's original intention
    • lots of implications for users down the road - more power in hands of users, but also more responsibility
  • umich plans to explore fair use incrementally
  • we want to develop a set of procedures, guidelines, etc. for other institution to replicate the process

• Ahrash
  • cc supports broad fair use analysis
  • wants to explore where fair use enables educational opportunities and is as small a burden as possible
  • one of ccLearn's core objectives is to do what it takes to get OERs up and used
  • identification and discovery of content, minimization and removal of technical, social, legal barriers to this process is what ccLearn does
  • ccLearn is not necessarily in a position to be pushing for major policy change, but wants to work on the practical level, the "how" now more than the "why"
  • wants to help reduce number of pinch points in the workflow....ccLearn does lots with automation (OER search engine, proper metadata attachment) to help with this, but where we can't automate we want to make it as easy and transparent as possible for humans to do it
  • repositories that try to include only open-licensed materials grow very very slowly because of various licensing provisions like the ever-complicated NC and other license interoperability complications--working to solve these issues
  • we need to encourage users to think about how to license as openly as they can (BY, BY-SA) but in a way that fits their purpose

• Tony
  • fair use protection is strong as a default here....because educational materials in a classroom are strong....the problem is when you start speaking about contexts other than those
  • there are various ways to approach this:
    • simply flag materials - if we just want to say "this is copyrighted"; this is easy
    • or give the user some idea of the range of uses - once you start saying go and use...incurs secondary liability
  • umich needs to be careful about making suggestions to users about how they can use content...we need to insulate ourselves--the fundamental problem is how to get the content up while limiting liability to the university? (Ahrash suggests we don't say "here's what you can do" but say "this stuff is not cc licensed"--distance ourselves)

• Jack
  • our overarching goal is to be able to use works that MIT is choosing not to use to make our sites more comprehensive
  • the idea that fair use would allow us to display something that would be stripped away by other OCWs is great, as long as we do it right
  • we can't predict what users will do with the OCW content, but we need to think about the likely uses that a typical user might make, like downloading, printing, etc.
  • if we think fair use is only strong for display....then it's different than doing other things like downloading/printing
  • agrees that we shouldn't be giving people advice....we should say "we're making a fair use on this work....we feel it's ok with us" and we should explain our thinking and explain our process
  • transparency is good, our process shouldn't be a mystery....we should disclose our choices up front....with canned text or symbols
  • for the "download this course" option....we might choose to filter, but we need more information here....."copyright is a fact-specific area of the law"
  • start out with wins....real wins and be earnest in our approach before we come really bold
  • asks us to think of an great fair use example we would herald

• Moving Ahead
  • 1. Conference call 2
    • piet, garin, tvol will pull together 6-8 examples with comments and will distribute to team before conference call
    • conference call discussion of examples and detailed discussion of workflow (Piet can you send updated workflow to Ahrash and others interested?)
    • shoot for within 2 weeks
    • also discuss involvement of other interested parties in a larger workshop

• • 2. Joseph, Ted, Ahrash Hewlett meeting week of Mar 10
    • explore funding for "face-to-face" meeting and/or fair use workshop

• • 3. face-to-face meeting
    • april?
    • tony very busy in april
    • discuss jack's ideas about licenses - a focus on "use" may be an interesting way to approach this
    • Hewlett funding rep invited?
    • more tbd