3. Related Concepts
One reason why “open content” is so difficult to define is because it is closely related to (and sometimes confused with) a number of other intellectual property concepts. To distinguish open content from these related concepts helps clarify its meaning.
Open content emerged by analogy from
open source, computer software which is released with its source code freely available, with users given the right to edit and redistribute the software
[3]
. The official open source definition is maintained by the
Open Source Initiative; it stipulates that no restrictions can be placed on how open source source code is used – it can be used for non-profit research or reused in a proprietary closed-source product that is sold for profit. An open content parallel would be that an open content digital photograph could be used in a teenager's vanity homepage, a university dissertation, or in a commercial encyclopedia CD-Rom, all without permission from the creator.
Some people dislike the idea that derivations of their creative work could be released under more restrictive licenses than the one they released their original work under. Much software and creative content is published with a
share-alike restriction on use. A share-alike restriction stipulates that if one alters, builds on, or transforms a piece of work, this derivative work must be released under the same share-alike license as the original work. This way, share-alike software and content may only beget other share-alike works.
Copyleft is the short name for legal frameworks that include share-alike restrictions. A document, piece of software, or work of art released with a copyleft license requires all derivative works to be released under a similar copyleft license. Copylefting is tolerated by the open source movement, but it is advocated by the technically similar but philosophically divergent
free software movement. The free software movement, as lead by the
Free Software Foundation, advocates essentially the same thing as the open source movement – software with its source code exposed and freely available. However, it has different philosophical motivations for doing so. Proponents of the term “free software” emphasize the ethical and moral aspects of software – maintaining that “software wants to be free”
[4]
, while proponents of the term “open source” prefer to emphasize the pragmatic benefits of exposed source code. The term “free content” has emerged to provide the analogous opponent of the term “open content”, though there does not seem to be a parallel, organized “open content” vs. “free content” ideological split.
Materials in the
public domain are those where no person holds economic rights or moral rights to the work. They can be copied, used and edited without restriction; public domain materials can be considered open content. However, not all open content is public domain: open content licenses often preserve the moral rights of the creator, often requiring proper
attribution when a work is reused or edited.
The concept of open content is closely entwined with the method of
collaborative authoring -- a process where multiple authors have equal (or near-equal) privilege to add to and edit a single work. Wikis enable collaborative authoring, and many popular examples of open content projects, such as
Wikipedia and the
Open Directory Project, are the result of collaborative authorship. However, not all open content need be the result of collaborative authorship (e.g. a photograph taken by a single photographer), and not all collaborativly authored works are released under open content licenses. The ability for anyone to freely contribute to a piece of work does not make the final piece of work open content either. For example, a message board that allows anonymous contributions yet claims copyright to all posted messages cannot be considered “open content.”
Open content works grant users the privilege to copy and reprint the source material; this privilege may not be granted by materials released as
open access. The
open access movement emerged out of the academic community, aiming to provide free access to scholarly information. The
MIT OpenCourseWare initiative provides open access, but as full copyright is retained by either MIT or the courses' authors, the project is not open content.
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