CUNY Academic Commons

Boone Gorges wrote:

Do we have an existing tool for users to choose a license for their blog? If so, I would ideally reuse the language and available options. If not, we'll need to come up with options, as well as some documentation on what those options mean. IMO, "CC" vs "Non-CC" is not fine-grained enough.

We do not, as far as I know. I have added Megan Wacha as a watcher on this, as she may be helpful in coming up with language

Bumping this ticket - it'd be pretty easy technically to add a license picker during blog creation (as well as on the Dashboard for existing sites), in addition to displaying the license info somewhere publicly on individual sites. But it needs some design work: the copy needs to be written, ideally with links to more resources, and I need to know where the UI should live (both in the admin and on the front end).

If we could come to agreement about something in the next week or so, it could probably squeeze into the 1.12 release.

So we've got a lot of great input from the librarians that Matt reached out to and I'm at the point of understanding that as we move forward with implementing license rights/options this is what we should offer:

• CC0
• CC BY
• CC BY-SA
• CC BY-NC-SA -- (DEFAULT)

The copy explaining what the default is (in my opinion) is too long but it provides great info - I think we could summarize it and then link to additional information. I think as Maura put it, this isn't something that is too heavy of an issue with our users (as far as we know).

If a user chooses to select any of the other three options we could redirect them to this link provided by Criasella: http://nowviskie.org/2011/why-oh-why-cc-by/ - From someone who knew nothing about CC's this was a great read. We could also add - https://creativecommons.org/choose/ - Although I felt that the article by Criasella was more informative and encompassing for the Commons purposes.

Matt - what are next steps here?

Can we (legally and ethically) force a CC license on our users? It seems like a de-emphasized, discouraged "No thanks, I'll keep the standard copyright protections" would serve to cover all possibilities, and respect the fact that some users may have legitimate reasons for not wanting to release under a CC license.

Related: What happens to existing content, created before we started forcing CC licenses?

IANAL but it's probably a good idea to talk to one once there's some internal agreement about the system we want.

Boone Gorges wrote:

Can we (legally and ethically) force a CC license on our users? It seems like a de-emphasized, discouraged "No thanks, I'll keep the standard copyright protections" would serve to cover all possibilities, and respect the fact that some users may have legitimate reasons for not wanting to release under a CC license.

Related: What happens to existing content, created before we started forcing CC licenses?

IANAL but it's probably a good idea to talk to one once there's some internal agreement about the system we want.

From our TOS (which was written by a lawyer and approved by the CUNY Legal Affairs Office:

c. License to Site Users.

Unless you specify otherwise, all Content you submit to the Site is submitted under the terms and conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike 3.0 license, or any successor or equivalent Creative Commons license. Under the terms of this license, you permit anyone to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt your Content, royalty-free, for non-commercial purposes on the condition that they credit your authorship each time they do so. You also permit others to distribute derivative works of your Content, but only if they do so under the same Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike license that governs your Content. Please read the full text of the Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 license (which includes a link to the full Creative Commons Legal Code).

This license also permits RSS aggregators to copy, distribute, display, and perform any of your Content that you syndicate using RSS. If you want to offer your Content under a different Creative Commons license, indicate on your blog, website or posting the license that applies.

You may offer your Content on a more restrictive basis by removing the Creative Commons logo and link from the blog, website or posting and labeling your Content with a full copyright notice: your name, the word “copyright” or symbol © and the year it was first published.

For all Creative Commons licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/.

I see this current project as offering a specific interface that allows people to choose a license, which could be either CC or standard copyright. We should consider, though, whether offering people the choice will result in more people picking standard copyright.

I see this current project as offering a specific interface that allows people to choose a license, which could be either CC or standard copyright. We should consider, though, whether offering people the choice will result in more people picking standard copyright

If people are only publishing on the Commons under a CC license because of the unread fine print, I don't think we've won any victories. We should provide educational materials and design cues that urge progressive licensing, and hope that people make the decision willfully. If we're going to force CC, then we should be up-front about it by stating it as policy.

We're not trying to force people to publish CC, and I agree on the educational materials -- that is what we are hoping to provide (through links) as we ask people to choose a license

one question to ask: if people don't choose a license, what is the default on the CAC? I think we'd say CC based on our TOS, but the reality is that many WP themes insert copyright phrases in the footer automatically, so it may be more haphazard

Let's discuss this in person at our meeting on 10/20

We're going to fold this into https://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/8836 and consider as part of the Fall 2018 release

#8836 has been pushed to 1.15, so let's move this too. Though, for future reference, it may be that this issue becomes less pressing once we have a license widget that appears in default site layouts. See #9943, #9938.

This is ticket is set for 1.15, but I've updated #9938 to include selecting a license during the site creation process:
https://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/attachments/9045/license-site-create.png

Like #7115, there is a question about licensing concerns with regards to CUNY. I can always disable this functionality if we do not come to some consensus on what needs to be done and delay this to 1.15, if need be.

I think it makes sense to include a license widget in the blog creation process, as a blog is typically thought of as more of a publishing venue than a group. I think a group license needs more discussion. So, I am in favor of keeping this ticket in 1.15 but delaying the group license discussion