Yesterday, the C-Change in GEES project welcomed the IPR expert –  Naomi Korn to a training session on copyright clearance for the C-change partners.

The session was hosted by Martin Reynolds and Dr Sandy Smith at the Open University in Milton Keynes on the afternoon of the 15th of September.  The training was provided online via Skype by Naomi (in London) with the partners in person at the OU. Mike Sanders joined for a while (with SKYPE) from Plymouth and Sharon Gedye and Ed Bremner represented the GEES subject centre in person.

Not all of the partners were able to make it, but for the four who did, it was a great opportunity to really get a grasp of the job that lay ahead for the partners and to start understanding the task of clearing the copyright for our teaching resources.

Naomi started the day with a very useful overview of IPR and Copyright law with particular attention to the task of clearance of the 3rd party copyright in the materials.

She then led the group through a discussion of possible Copyright Licenses that might be used for the project, with a particular attention to those created by the  ’Creative Commons’ movement, which is favoured by JISC.  After some discussion the partners present were all able to agree on using the  Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales or (BY-NC-SA) license.

This means that you are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
• Non-Commercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.
• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the licence terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
• Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights.

All the partners present thought it was a very useful day, but shared an element of apprehension about the amount of work the 3rd party copyright clearance could or would take.

The day also gave the opportunity for the partners to meet Ed Bremner for the first time, who will be shortly starting in post as C-Change in GEES Project Co-ordinator.

Ed assured all the partners that he would be happy to come and visit as soon as there were staff in place to undertake the copyright clearance.