Key words: licensing, licence strategy, licence compatibility, dual licensing, cross border issues, jurisdiction


Professor Roger Williams is employed at the University of Wollongong and has written a fantastic introductory text on integrated weather prediction, a new field, which is evolving very fast. He stores his notes in a Word document, which he prints out for his students at the beginning of the semester. He reviews and updates the text each semester.

He is interested in making his introductory text available digitally, to save printing costs, and to allow his students to leave comments directly online, but is worried that others might take it and use in ways that he is not comfortable with. He is happy for others to use and modify the text but he does not want others to get rich from his work. And of course, He feels that he should always be attributed.

He wishes to share the following materials with his colleague Professor Maria Masaba who is based in the United Kingdom:

• Selected student research and assignments;
• An electronic copy of an article written by him and published in an all rights reserved journal that his university library has made available on the university intranet under a licence from the publisher; and
• A translation of the above translated by Professor Williams.

 
Questions (to be answered by each group)

Note: If you need additional information to answer any of these questions, identify that information and how it would influence your responses.

1. Are any of the Creative Commons licences appropriate for him to use on his introductory text? 
2. Do you know of any other licences that he may want to use?
3. What permission, if any, does he require to be able to share the materials with Professor Masaba?
4. Does it make a difference that his colleague is based in the UK?

Questions to assist your understanding (not to be answered in the assignment answers)

1. How and when can you apply an open licence to a resource?
2. What should you think about when you choose a licence?
3. Who "owns" the copyright in student's work?
4. Does an institution own its employee's work?
5. What rights do authors have over materials they have licensed to others?
6. Why are open licences useful when collaborating and sharing material?
7. Can material under copyright exceptions be included in open licensed work?