Lawrence Liang, A Guide To Open Content Licences, Piet Zwart Institute, December 2004. From the Introduction: 'In recent years copyright has moved away from being an esoteric and technical legal subject to one that affects musicians, designers, artists, students, authors, ordinary consumers, and more generally any one involved in any way in cultural production. Copyright stories assault us everyday in our newspapers, our emails and in the next few years, will play a very important role in determining the way we think of creativity; either in terms of property or in terms of collaboration. It is an issue in which content creators have a vital stake and certainly too important an issue to leave to the lawyers alone. This booklet serves as an introduction to the world of "open content licensing", a paradigm that is rapidly emerging as an important alternative to the existing model of copyright. The world of open content licensing (which we shall consider in detail as we go along) has great benefits for a large number of people. You could for instance be: ...A scholar, critic or essayist who wants his writing to be publicly accessible, to schools, libraries and the general public instead of signing over copyrights to academic journal and book publishers who normally do not pay their authors, but make public institutions pay a lot of money for these publications.' (PS: Readers of this blog will already understand the concept. But if you're bewildered by the sheer variety of open content or OA licenses, this guide is comprehensive, up-to-date, and clear.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/09/2004 11:23:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
