Ownership & Licences

Ownership and Sharing

Copyright, however, has always been a challenge for many educators and students. The principle that ideas are legally owned might well appeal to you if you’ve spent considerable amounts of time and effort in developing these ideas, but it can make things difficult for those who want to share, or even adapt or enhance your ‘product’.   Creative Commons licences Links to an external site. were developed to allow authors and producers of materials to be properly credited and recognised, but enable learners, teachers, and other users to be able to freely use the materials without having to seek permission or a licensing arrangement each time. The informal video below gives a very clear overview. The licences have different versions depending on how permissive you are prepared to be, from fully ‘public domain’ (CC0) which doesn’t require acknowledgement and can be used by anyone for any purpose, or restricted to only use for non-commercial purposes and with full credit acknowledged. It is also possible to insist that anyone who extends or enhances your materials must also make them freely available on the same licence basis. 

 

Overview of Creative Commons licences (University of Guelph, and researchoutreach.org)

 

People often get confused on the details of CC, so it’s important to understand that the materials are still copyrighted, just that CC allows a range of permissions. If someone (or a publishing company) wishes to use the materials in a different way to those specified, then they must sign an agreement/licence with you (as the originator) in the normal way (if you are willing) but they won’t be able to rescind any previous licensed versions. 

For those of us working in universities, the issue of intellectual property, or ownership, of the materials which we produce can be more complicated than is often realised and varies between institutions and countries.  For example, in some cases, there is an expectation that any materials developed by a lecturer/teacher in the ordinary course of their employment should be owned by their employer (as the funder of the materials development). If the lecturer/teacher produces materials which cannot be reasonably considered as a normal requirement of their work (e.g. writing a published textbook) then the ownership belongs to them, or in some proportionate share with their employer. Institutions have their own policies in regards intellectual property ownership which apply not just to the research dimensions of your work, but also potentially to the teaching aspects.

This issue can become quite contentious when recorded lectures Links to an external site. are considered, and there was a case in the UK where some universities attempted to use such recordings to circumvent a strike by academic staff. Links to an external site.

Some universities are strongly supportive of open publishing and encourage their staff to release and disseminate their work in this way.   An example is that of the University of Edinburgh, who have developed a policy and a general copyright statement Links to an external site. which staff should use on materials that they develop,

"When creating and publishing OERs, the copyright owner(s), author(s), date and Creative Commons licence applied must be visibly attributed. The copyright owner will normally be the University of Edinburgh for OERs created at the University. Author(s) should also be properly acknowledged, giving recognition for work undertaken, along with date and Creative Commons licence applied so that others can clearly understand what permissions for reuse are being granted. An example of good attribution would be:

© [Author Name], University of Edinburgh 2016 CC BY     "

 

The tidal wave that never came?

In 2013, an influential 'think-tank' in the UK, published a report Links to an external site.which reacted to the then current hype around 'MOOCs' or Massive, Open, Online Courses, warning that traditional universities and their courses would be pushed aside by the proliferation of these new providers of free education (e.g. Coursera, Udacity, edX) and that adaptation was crucial. Not quite as dramatic as Sebastian Thrun's claim Links to an external site. that there would only be a small number of 'universities' left and his company would be one of them, but nonetheless something which occupied public attention across the world.  In some cases MOOCs were seen as potential 'taster courses' to promote more substantive study programmes, in others they focused on professional development, and in some they were seen also as an effective means of delivering some public aspects of education.  Although much of the English language narrative around MOOCs has been dominated by such claims in the US and the UK, the responses in different countries varied considerably.  In the case of France, for example, a public-sector platform has been established, France Universite Numerique (FUN) Links to an external site., supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, which promotes the visibility of 'the French training offer' in France and around the world.  [ Note that materials on MOOCs  will still have their own copyright and licence terms and they should not be mistaken  as a repository of fully open customisable materials.]

In the intervening decade, many of the original MOOC platforms have scaled back their ambitions and re-formed as private training providers, aligned with publishers or recruitment agencies, etc. Some universities still partner with such platforms to offer professional development related short courses, or public outreach from research projects, and some (eg Edinburgh and the OU) do indeed make their materials openly available.   

 

The other one which looms?

First coming to widespread public attention in 2022, Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), has had a major impact on copyright and other ethical debates. It is clear that the Large Language Models (LLMs) which underpin many of these new tools have been trained on online content from public and commercial sources, blatantly ignoring any constraint of intellectual property.  A number of law suits have been tabled, and some content licensing deals are hurriedly being arranged, but given how this technology works, it is highly likely that when you ask Gen AI to produce materials or resources for you, it will echo or paraphrase content on which it has been trained - both of which would, in traditional academic terms, constitute plagiarism.  So there is a real dilemma in the use of Gen AI, not just with regards the integrity of assessments Links to an external site. which we give to our students, but our own potential use to generate content such as lesson plans, lists of learning outcomes, quizzes, and other course content. This is quite apart from some of the other ethical and environmental concerns raised by the deployment of these technologies at scale.

One of the leading contenders in the field is the company known as 'Open AI Links to an external site.', whose name should not be read to signify any of the senses of 'open' that we have covered here. It may well have started out with aspirations of working for a 'common good', but as the company has developed and it has structured its legal and commercial arrangements, it is quite clear that its name is now potentially misleading. Indeed, this and other companies in the domain have also raised questions about how they handle any data, materials, or information which you provide to their systems. Their terms and conditions need a lot of consideration and there are several ways in which you might also breach copyright obligations (eg uploading a journal paper to an AI system to obtain a summary version or a translation) simply using these tools.  It is currently a legal minefield.

Many teachers would consider themselves to be pragmatic rather than legalistic and that using tools in context of education rather than commercially might not result in them being the top targets for any legal action, but it is very important to be careful, particularly in terms of safeguarding student and personal information. Some products offer levels of data protection and guarantees that any documents used are not shared (e.g. Microsoft's current terms for Copilot Pro for those within a corporate/university MS environment), but it depends on how you log on and type of licence.

From a practical perspective, many Gen AI tools exist which can generate lesson plans, slide decks and presentations, quizzes, marking schemes and rubrics, graphics and video content, summaries of papers and documents, simulated conversations. In other words a really extensive range of educational outputs and activities. This is why it is crucial that the legal aspects become clarified, as well as the technical limitations, chief of which is that such systems are essentially language manipulation tools and have no inbuilt conceptual understanding of any topic you might be exploring with them. This often results in misinformation, wrong answers, and what has become known as 'hallucinations' (i.e. falsehoods) in their output. Anyone using such tools, has then to exert extreme caution Links to an external site. in the level of trust placed in their results.

 

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